


It's the Little Things

by SuzyQSmilesForYou



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-19 00:49:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 33,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1449172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuzyQSmilesForYou/pseuds/SuzyQSmilesForYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of vignettes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Grocery Shopping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I can get into the mood for writing quite easily, but other times I have to give myself mini-prompts to get the words flowing. As a result I have various odds and ends that haven't made it into my main story. They shouldn't have to rot away in unopened Word documents, though, so I figured I would offer them to you guys as a series of unconnected vignettes.
> 
> These can be enjoyed as a standalone or alongside Honey Trap.
> 
> Let me be very clear with you guys about expectations, however. Unlike Honey Trap, I will not post new scenes on a regular basis. You'll get what you get when you get it.

“Hey, Dave. It’s quarter to ten. You know what that means, right?” Susan asked from the next lane over.

The man knew exactly what it meant. The only highlights of the NYU grad student’s otherwise miserable grocery checkout job were the Friday night appearances of those two men. Every time they came in it was like Zephyr blowing a cool breeze through the otherwise stagnant store. He’d only had the job five weeks and already he marked it in his phone’s calendar.

Unfortunately, they’d always gone through another lane. The one time they went through Susan’s she’d parsed each word exchanged the whole weekend afterwards. It was the envy more than anything that infuriated him. They’d been so close and he’d been stuck with that crusty old senior citizen who’d demanded that he credit her expired coupons.

Still, hope springs eternal and all that.

The little jingle announcing another customer entering upstairs rang out and he turned to face the escalators. It was even better than he remembered: two gorgeous guys in impossibly tailored suits sailed down to the basement. The lanky blond was holding the red basket and jabbering on while the older brunet nodded with exhausted eyes. The former’s faded brown messenger bag swung to the rhythm of the gestures its owner made. When their feet met the floor again they headed on to the produce section and faded from view.

“How in God’s name do they always look so immaculate?” Susan asked, her head resting on the palms of her hands as she stared off at where they had been.

“What do you think? West Villagers?” he suggested in response, turning an eye on a group of teenagers picking up a box of doughnuts.

“I’d put my money on Chelsea. You know they’re throwing up another one of those glass monstrosities where it borders Hell’s Kitchen? All my banker customers keep telling me how much they’re bribing the building owners to get a unit.”

“I don’t think they’re bankers, though. The younger guy’s hair is too messy.”

“If you’re looking at his hair then you’re missing the best parts, Dave,” she laughed as the teenagers put the doughnuts on her conveyor belt.

Dave sighed and checked out the next few customers. An elderly man buying three boxes of Trojans (the ladies at the retirement center were hellcats, apparently), an NYU undergrad stocking up on ramen, and an oligarch’s trophy wife who complained that the caviar selections were insufficient. He’d almost forgotten about the two men when they reappeared from the other end of the store, the blond struggling to carry the overstuffed container.

“Excuse me – do you know where they moved the peanut butter? I just had it figured out and then they switched everything around again,” a middle-aged woman requested from in front of him.

“I’d be happy to do that,” Susan offered. “I have exactly the same problem myself. I keep telling the manager to leave things the way they are, but he said that the consultancy group we hired forecast that sales would increase if we shuffled the stuff. I guess that’s why I’m tagging and bagging, huh?”

The two women ambled off, but Dave’s co-worker turned and gave him a combination thumbs-up and wink just as the two men approached his lane.

“Mike, I think I’m going to have to start taking you to the gym with me. You really need to build up your arm muscles,” the brunet assessed once the blond had placed the basket on the floor and given an exaggerated sigh of relief.

“You’re welcome to do the heavy-lifting anytime you want, Harvey,” he jabbed back, but his amusement betrayed the note of irritation he was attempting.

“Good evening,” greeted the older one to Dave. “Sorry about the squabbling. It’s been a long week.”

“Tell me about it. Are you guys just heading home from a show?” he asked, hoping his nerves weren’t audible.

“From the office,” the blond answered. “We’re lawyers.”

“I am, anyway. I don’t always know about you,” the brunet said, shaking his head and placing their purchases on the conveyor belt.

Said items reflected the polarity of the relationship. If one person had picked them out Dave would have been certain that he or she was schizophrenic. A six-pack of cheap beer led the way for two bottles of expensive wine. Premium roast coffee accompanied a small hill of Red Bulls. A few boxes of Mac & Cheese towered over strips of fresh lox and prosciutto from the fish and butcher’s departments, respectively.

“Do you work in the same firm?” he asked as rang up each purchase, stopping to punch in a code for the bulk items when necessary.

“Yes,” the brunet answered.

“That’s pretty convenient, huh?”

“It has its ups and downs. I have my own office, though, so I don’t seem him all that much.”

“He drops by the bullpen practically every other hour,” the blond supplied, earning a scathing look from the older man. “Don’t believe the façade – he’s a total softie.”

“Hmph. You’re free to pick up the bill if you want, Mike,” he shot back to the younger man.

“Nope, I think I’ll let you handle that,” he smiled as he walked towards the filling bags at the end of the lane.

There was a sharp thud and Dave returned his attention to the various goods making their way down the belt. Beyond the plastic bags containing various fruits and vegetables the older man had dropped a jar of petroleum jelly. It was an enormous jumbo tub of the stuff. He’d never seen anyone purchase one of them during his entire stint working there.

Another one landed on the conveyor belt while the brunet stacked the now empty basket on with the rest of its kind. It wobbled slightly from the force of the impact and the cashier grabbed it before it toppled over onto the lettuce. It didn’t want to cooperate with the scanner and he realized how silly he must have looked, shaking the gargantuan container as he tried to align it properly.

Finally the damn computer picked it up and he was able to toss both of the things into the first bag beside the wine. Dave was going to make a comment when he noticed the blond behind him had reddened to the shade of his apron.

“I…get…nosebleeds,” he offered, throwing a hand over his face and staring down at the bag in shame.

“Oh sure, right, like he’s going to believe that,” the brunet said, rolling his eyes.

“Did you have to buy two of them?!” the blond demanded, still locked on the brown paper sack before him.

“I didn’t want to run out again like last time – which was your fault, by the way. And yeah, I’m never going to let that one go,” the brunet explained, reaching in his pocket for his wallet.

“I didn’t see anything,” Dave said with a grin. “Your total comes to seventy-five dollars and eighty-three cents. Credit?”

“Yes,” the man answered, pulling a black Visa from his wallet. “We thank you for your discretion, Mister…?”

“Just call me Dave.”

“Well then, see you in a week, Dave,” the older man said with a small grin before walking past the blond and stopping. “Hurry up, Mike. Ray’s waiting and I’d like to get home sometime soon.”

“Task master,” the younger man muttered as he hefted the two brown sacks up and adjusting his messenger bag with a twist of his torso. He made his way towards his partner once he’d readied himself.

“Are you up for edgeball tonight?” the older man asked, slipping a hand to the small of the blond’s back.

“You know you don’t need to ask,” the blond answered as they stepped on the escalator and ascended back to the ground floor. Dave heard laughter before the jingle announced the doors opening to let them out.

“So,” Susan started, “do you owe me bigtime or do you owe me bigtime?”

“Shhh,” Dave hushed her. "Let me enjoy it a little more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of Harvey and Mike buying groceries after a week at the office popped into my head. It was too perfect not to serve as the introductory installment of whatever this becomes.
> 
> And FYI, if you want to know what "edgeball" is, you'll just have to wait for Chapter Eleven (or possibly Twelve) of Honey Trap.


	2. Cat Sitting

“There. I put its food out – don’t ask me to do any more than that.”

“Harvey, Franklin is nearly blind. You need to call him to let him know it’s time for dinner.”

The older man huffed. He couldn’t believe Mike had signed them up for looking after Wendy’s cat. It was like the blond couldn’t say no ever.

“Cat, dinnertime,” he said lazily, walking to the counter and pouring himself a glass of wine.

“Gee, don’t strain yourself or anything. If that’s your idea of coaxing then it’s no wonder your clients are never honest with you from the start.”

“I’m the city’s best closer, Mike, not opener. Although you have to admit I’m pretty good at opening you up,” he smirked, earning himself an exasperated look from the other man. “And as for your suggestion: CAT, DINNER!” he shouted this time. “Is that better?”

“I said ‘coax’, not scare into shitting a brick on the floor of the guest bathroom.”

“You told me he was housetrained, Mike. No, you _promised_ me that he was housetrained.”

“He is…I think.”

Fuck.

“Here Franklin. Here kitty kitty kitty,” Mike started, heading off further into the condo. “It’s okay, buddy. Uncle Harvey will be nice or I won’t give him any head tonight.”

The older man had already made significant progress on his pasta when Mike returned to the kitchen, a chubby gray and white tabby following clumsily behind. The blond led it to the food bowl near the front door with soothing words and petted its head gently until it started eating.

“You see what you can accomplish when you use a little kindness?”

“You wouldn’t need to use kindness if you had just used a little backbone and declined to watch it in the first place. I’m sure Wendy could have found someone else to care for it while she’s on vacation.”

“But looking after Franklin makes me happy,” Mike explained, slurping up a heap of noodles into his mouth.

“And what does that have to do with me?” Harvey asked, pointing his fork at Mike’s knife (a silent suggestion for him to cut up his food and not be disgusting).

“Happy Mike becomes Horny Mike very easily.”

“Point taken. We don’t have to worry about him dying in here, do we?”

“Not as long as you remember to put food and milk out on time. He’s a rescue case, yeah, but he’s only five years old,” Mike responded between enormous mouthfuls of food. “We should ask if Tiffany downstairs wants to have a playdate with him.”

“We’ll see about that,” Harvey answered.

The conversation gave way to a discussion of a new client and all the ridiculous shit he was demanding of the firm. Harvey offered a few hints on how to maximize the man’s bill, occasionally stealing glances behind him to make sure the cat wasn’t about to strike his ankle.

“So, watch the baseball game?” Mike asked once he’d polished off the last of the pasta and fruit salad.

“That is the best way to get Happy Harvey to come out,” he joked, picking up the plates and flatware.

“Awesome. You hear that, Franklin? Harvey’s not going to be a sourpuss all night long.”

Harvey groaned at the younger man.

“Am I going to have to put up with bad puns during its entire stay?- because I’m fairly sure we agreed this was a strictly no-pussy relationship.”

“Nope. The only part of our contract concerning anything close to that is the clause stating we’ll both avoid using the term ‘manpussy’ or any derivative thereof.”

“Just go turn on the television, smartass,” Harvey ordered, rolling his eyes.

As Harvey fed their stemware into the dishwasher he noticed the cat drawing ever closer to him.

“Hsst. Stay away,” he warned, but the sound only encouraged the ball of fur’s approach. “Shoo. Go bug Mike.”

“C’mere, Franklin,” the younger man called out from the living room. “I’m not scared of you, buddy.”

“I’m _not_ scared of the cat. I just don’t want to break anything if it tries to claw my leg.”

“Sure, whatever you say, stud.”

Harvey finished loading the appliance and made his way over to the couch. He was ready to plop down beside his obnoxious boyfriend when he noticed the cat lounging in his usual spot.

“Franklin, come sit in my lap. Uncle Harvey gets weird about his spot this and his spot that.”

“Hmph. You love that cat more than you love me,” he whined, sitting down once the cat hopped onto the blond’s legs. Harvey wrapped his arm around Mike and planted a kiss on the man’s cheek despite his vexation.

“He’s a guest in our condo, Harvey. I’m just treating him with the same amount of love he’d get if he was with his owner.”

The cat mosied on from Mike’s lap to his. He recoiled but tried to play it off by scowling as though he wasn’t terrified. The technique backfired badly, Mike bursting into laughter beside him.

“Shut up. I’m completely okay with this.”

“Uh-huh. FYI, I’m telling Donna about this on Monday.”

“Don’t you dare or I’ll-”

“ _And here they are: your New York Yankees!”_

The cat let out an enormous meow and relaxed itself across his lap.

“Hmm, that’s weird. Yankees,” Harvey experimented.

“Mrawwwwwr.”

“Yankees?”

“Mreeeeawwwwwr.”

“It might not be easy on the eyes or particularly capable, but this cat at least seems to have good taste in sports teams.”

“You love him already,” Mike sang beside him.

“I do not.”

“I bet you’ll bawl your eyes out when we have to give him back on Thursday.”

“Mike, stop making up fantasies in your head,” he scolded. “Yankees.”

“Mreeawwwr,” Franklin purred, snuggling his head into the space between Harvey’s knees. The older man waited until Mike was lost in the game to smile openly.

\-----

Mike moaned into the pillow. Doggy style wasn’t either of the men’s favorite position, but it was a nice break from missionary or cowboy.

“Do you like that, babe? Tell me what you want,” Harvey whispered when he’d leaned down to bite the younger man’s ear.

“Don’t go easy on me, Harvey. I need it fast and hard tonight,” he forced past gritted teeth, pushing himself back further onto the brunet’s erection.

“Such a good boy. I love watching my cock disappear into your muscly ass.”

“Unfff. Just like that, stud.”

“Mrawwr.”

Harvey stilled behind Mike, forcing the younger man to push himself up onto his legs to turn around and assess the situation.

“He’s in the room, Mike. I told you you should have let me shut the door.”

“Oh for- We have sex out on the deck all spring and summer, Harvey. Are you really telling me an exhibitionist like you can’t stand to have a cat watch us?”

“He might pounce and try to claw at our genitals. You don’t know what’s going on in his mind,” the older man babbled.

“I can’t believe this,” Mike stated. He pulled himself off of Harvey’s dick sharply and got up from the bed, donning the older man’s discarded lounge pants.

“You’re responsible for it.”

“Franklin, buddy, it’s bedtime,” Mike said softly, ignoring his boyfriend’s ridiculous freakout. “Let’s get you tucked in by the window so you can watch the pigeons until you fall asleep.”

He ruffled the feline’s fur a little and whistled so it’d have some noise to follow as they made their way out of the bedroom and across the living room. Franklin looked up at him and let out a few pleased meows when he pulled the blanket over him and rubbed his tummy. Mike might need to have a few words with Wendy about putting him on a diet.

“Well, there went the evening,” Harvey moaned, lying supine on the bed. His erection had gone down and his arms were folded across his chest petulantly when Mike returned. The younger man made sure to close the door before he made his way over to the chair, pushing the pants down to his ankles and kicking them off. That accomplished, he climbed back onto the bed, straddling the brunet.

“I don’t know about that, Harvey. We’ve got plenty of time,” he noted, leaning down to nibble on a nipple before migrating his tongue to the older man’s collarbone. “And I’m still loose and lubed.”

“…Where were we?” Harvey asked, his arousal stiffening and leaking precome along Mike’s crack.

\-----

Harvey was changing the sheets in the guest room a few weeks later in anticipation of Marcus’ visit when he noticed a new photo hanging up on the wall. He abandoned the messy fold in the corner of the bed and walked over to take a closer look at it.

A laughing Mike sat on the couch, petting a somewhat uninterested Franklin resting in his lap. He hadn’t taken the picture, so it must have been Donna. The woman had stopped by one night after Mike had assured her she was missing the best show on earth: the great Harvey Specter versus a visually impaired feline.

Okay, so he’d already fallen for the subtle charms of the furball…possibly. Franklin made a good co-spectator for baseball when Mike was busy working on a case. He scared the rats-with-wings from shitting all over his luxury balcony, too. And then there was the way he purred happily when the older man set out his morning milk. Maybe Harvey would offer to take care of him again in a few months if Wendy needed a couple nights alone.

He’d do it for Mike’s sake, naturally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Franklin is based on a real cat. He's not mine, but he is pretty irresistible.
> 
> And yes, these short blips are a lot of fun to write.


	3. Returning Home

“Need any help with your bags, Harvey?”

“No thanks, Ray. I’ll manage. Sorry about keeping you away from the Misses and the little one so late at night.”

“No worries, boss – they went to sleep hours ago. You get some rest, too, okay?” the man prodded with a knowing wink.

“Goodnight, Ray,” he smirked back, walking towards the building and turning back in time to catch the wave of his driver as he made the journey to Astoria. The man was due for a nice gift. Maybe Harvey’d give him a night off and three tickets for the Lion King. His daughter’s drawing of a zebra had rested proudly on the back of his seat for a couple weeks now.

Harvey’d run the idea past Donna first, though, of course.

Sighing, he made his way past the guard with a silent nod and headed for the main elevator bank. No use taking the glass one: he only got pleasure out of treating Mike to the honor. The brunet spent the ride up to the penthouse adjusting the garment bags in his left hand while rocking his suitcase back and forth with the other. If it weren’t so late at night he might have whistled to help with the waiting.

It took a bit of fumbling to get the right key from the chain, and he cursed himself when he pushed the door a tad too hard. Luckily he caught the damn thing before it banged against the stopper. Catastrophe averted, he glanced around the condo.

A couple pairs of Chucks lay messily in the foyer, apart from the other footwear perched on the rack. He popped his own shoes off quietly, taking the moment to admire the counters that were still free of boxes or smaller appliances. (Harvey liked to hide the latter in the cabinets underneath when they weren’t in use; he took pride in pushing minimalism to new heights.) Shoes put away, he toed the pedal for the bin and was taken aback to find an empty bag.

Mike must have really been lonely while he was gone.

Harvey carefully opened the closet door and hung up his dirty suits, then picked up the carryall and made his way towards the bedroom. The lights were on, though, and not just the one they left for each other when one had to stay late at the office. Sure enough, the brunet found his boyfriend in the living room. Gingerly setting the suitcase back down, he moved in for a closer inspection.

Mike lay across the couch, a blanket covering him up to his waist and a book entitled _Dream of the Red Chamber_ open to roughly the halfway point forgotten on his chest. It took a moment for the brunet to recognize that the younger man was wearing one of the older man’s Harvard t-shirts, a little big for his lithe frame. In one of his hands was his cell phone, and on the coffee table his wallet was open to a picture of them he’d goaded out of Harvey, taken on a Sunday afternoon spent at Coney Island enjoying the old rollercoasters.

He’d only admit it sparingly, but Harvey needed the ego boost scenes like this inspired in him. Clients joked that being his partner was probably the best gig in the world, but they had it all backwards. The older man still caught himself grinning like an idiot from the way the loudmouthed genius loved him so much.

And somehow realizations like that didn’t urge bile up his esophagus, miraculously.

Slinking back to his luggage, he hefted the carryall through the bedroom and to the walk-in. Harvey felt unpacking should be done immediately, both because risking leaving his clothes inside to wrinkle any longer was criminal, but also because he had a feeling Mike wouldn’t give him enough down time to accomplish the task once the blond was awake.

He’d just finished re-hangering the last of his unworn dress shirts in the ‘needs ironing’ section when he felt the telltale vibrations of footsteps. Turning back towards the slid-open door, he caught Mike approaching from the darkness of the bedroom.

“Welcome back, Harvey.”

“Mike, I told you that you didn’t have to wait up for me,” he stated lightly. He bent down to fetch his swirl of ties from the little round box and made his way towards both their rack and the younger man.

“I wanted to,” he replied with a sleepy grin. The man leaned in closer and they shared a long kiss before Harvey returned to the task at hand. “How was California?”

“Profitable, though I feel ridiculous telling twenty-two year olds not to dump the entirety of the two billion they just made selling their start-up back into the competition.”

“Yeah, but if financial responsibility courses were mandatory in Silicon Valley half the companies wouldn’t exist.”

“And then I’d be free of all these wretched copyright infringement lawsuits. Seriously, intellectual property is almost as boring as intestacy,” he groaned, setting the last silk adornment on its hook.

“I guess it wasn’t all bad, though – you look darker.”

“Donna booked us at that funky hipster hotel for the three days in LA. I sprung for separate rooms, so I got to spend some time on the balcony after we figured out the client’s problem wasn’t half as bad as she’d made it sound.”

“Wait, did you tan-”

“Yup,” the older man anticipated with a smirk, leading the way back to the living room now that the unpacking was finished.

“Did you use-”

“That coconut suntan lotion you bought me? Mmhmm. I laid out for a while on the second day and it got everywhere.”

“E-everywhere?” Mike asked, obviously imagining what that looked like.

“That’s what I said, Mike.”

“Man. You and Harold got to go to California and Jessica was off in DC, but I was stuck at the office.”

“World’s tiniest violin, babe. DC is disgusting this time of year, anyway,” he lectured, taking a seat on the couch and reaching down to slide off his dress socks. “I did offer you phone sex.”

“Yeah, at noon Pacific time. Did you forget that that’s only three in the afternoon here?”

“You could have locked yourself in the file room. I’m a little hurt you didn’t try harder, to be honest,” he said with a fake note of disappointment.

“Says the man who was probably batting horny, remodeled housewives away with both hands.”

“But bat them away I did, because I’m stuck with a horny, unremodeled associate,” Harvey grinned, working on his own tie now. “How were things at the office? Did Rachel pass her LSATs?”

“Yup,” the blond said, lighting up at Harvey’s question. “We went out for drinks earlier tonight but I left when she started making moves on the bartender.”

“Ugh.”

“What, you don’t want her to succeed?” A slight hint of anger lay underneath the newest verbal interrogatory.

“I do. But Mike, eventually you’ll realize that all the good paralegals become lawyers, which is why we’re stuck trying to make do with the bad ones. Rachel has been by far the most reliable researcher Pearson Hardman has ever known,” he confessed, setting aside his tie and unbuttoning his shirt. “Now we’re left with tits in a pencil skirt and that brainless man whose homepage is the Daily Mail.”

“You’ve been rooting for her secretly this entire time, haven’t you?”

“Did you listen to anything I just said?” he deflected. “I would have been home sooner myself, but Harold got plastered on business class champagne and I wanted to make sure he didn’t get mugged and lose the contract outlines.”

“He’s as red as a lobster, isn’t he? Did you force alcohol on him so you wouldn’t have to listen to him whimper in pain?”

“I’m something of a humanitarian,” he surrendered with a chuckle. “Is that book any good?”

Mike moved so that he was straddling the older man, leaning in for another drawn-out, sloppy kiss. The blond pulled Harvey’s dress shirt’s tails loose from his trousers and finished undoing the buttons, sliding his hands below the t-shirt underneath.

“I missed you, Harvey.”

“I was only gone six days, babe.”

“It felt longer than that.”

“How about we skip this conversation and you let me finish getting ready for bed so that we can both sleep off the week?”

“Are you going to make it worth my while?” Mike asked with a mischievous flick of his glance.

“You won’t find out unless you hop off me,” Harvey warned, taking the opportunity to deliver a few light spanks to the man’s firm behind.

“Oo-kay, fine. You win, killjoy,” he acquiesced, picking up Harvey’s socks and tie as he stood.

\-----

Mike lay on his side, waiting for Harvey to finish up in the bathroom. He stifled a laugh as the older man unleashed an enormous yawn, flapping his hand over his mouth to make mock Native American calls. The lights went out and shortly thereafter he felt the mattress give as Harvey shifted closer. Muscular arms wrapped around him, pulling him back into a warm chest. Light kisses down his neck followed.

“I know I said you didn’t have to, but thanks for waiting up for me, Mike. It’s nice to have somebody to come home to,” Harvey whispered, as though he was struggling to get the words out. Knowing the man as well as he did, that might have actually been the case.

Mike turned himself around so that he could see Harvey’s face. He planted a messy kiss on the man’s forehead. Suddenly feeling naughty, he snaked a hand lower and gave a few cursory pumps to the man’s penis.

“Hey, we need our rest,” Harvey said, wrapping his hand around Mike’s.

“Are you completely sure about that, stud?” he asked with a slight pout. An open-mouth kiss prevented him from suggesting an alternative schedule for the early morning.

“Yes. It's been too long since I've been fucked, and I’m going to ride you tomorrow morning no matter how fatigued you might be,” the older man stated flatly.

“Now I’m definitely not going to get any sleep,” he whined shamelessly, complete with an oversized frown.

“Your problem, babe,” Harvey scolded, rolling him back around. “Goodnight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm mentally warning myself to stop making these chapters longer and longer, since it defeats the point of having quick scenes to contrast with the mammoth main story.
> 
> Also, I've noticed that words will randomly go missing when I copy my drafts from Office onto the site. At first I figured it was just the profanity, but that doesn't seem to be the full extent of it. Do any other authors have the same problem / a solution?


	4. Nursing a Dragon

Mike awoke to the sound of rustling. He’d spent the night alone – Harvey felt ill the evening before and had insisted on sleeping in the guest room so as to avoid the possibility of spreading it.

“Harvey?”

“Mike, you’ve got another fifteen minutes before the alarm goes off. Get back to sleep,” the older man answered hoarsely from the bathroom.

Mike rose and walked to the doorway, finding the brunet leaning on the counter. He looked miserable, and not least because he was wearing those damned powder blue pajamas. Harvey Specter only wore clothes when he slept in three situations:

(A)  Marcus was visiting

(B)  Donna was staying over because of fumigation/renovation

(C)  he was sick

“I hope you don’t think you’re going into work today.”

“I don’t think I’m going in, I know I am,” the older man replied. He tried for a chuckle, but it ended up as a nasty cough instead.

“Harvey, you’re so wan that your face is paler than mine. Either you call Donna or I will.”

“Mike, you’re an associate. If you have to stay home sick, the worst thing that happens is that someone’s briefs are delayed for a day. I’m a partner: I need to be there to meet with my clients,” he grunted, shuffling to the medicine cabinet and pulling out a box of decongestant.

“I swear you make no sense sometimes. You refused to sleep in your own bed last night on the fear you might give me something; now you’re intent on going into work so that you can definitely give your clients something. I’m going to get your phone.”

“Don’t you dare,” he cried, chasing after Mike. The brunet might even have caught him if he hadn’t broke down into another coughing fit.

“Donna, hey. Yeah, I know it’s early, but it’s important. Hold on.” Mike turned and pressed the speakerphone button before offering the device to its owner. “Last chance: would you like to tell her yourself?”

Harvey grunted but grabbed for the phone.

_“It got worse, didn’t it?”_

“Slightly. Mike is under the impression that I need to stay home…”

_“And he’s right. If I see you in the building today, I’ll use the sleeper hold on you.”_

“Will you be able to postpone my 10:00 to tomorrow? Valkoff is a real bastard about his schedule.”

_“I’ll excuse you questioning my abilities because you’re under the weather, but don’t let it happen again. Mike, I know you don’t have anything pressing today. Do you want me to-”_

“No,” Harvey called out. “I don’t need a caretaker.”

“Yes, Donna. Thank you,” he refuted, snatching the phone back and disconnecting.

“Mike, you don’t have to stay home. I’m not a toddler.”

“Enough arguing, Harvey. Get in bed; I’ll go start on breakfast.”

The older man grumbled and muttered to himself but crawled underneath the sheets. Mike pulled on a pair of boxers from the nightstand and headed out to the kitchen. While washing his hands he pondered what would be the best thing to give the Grumpy Gus. Oatmeal and orange juice probably, but he’d add in a little bacon since he knew the brunet would secretly love it.

He was just setting the food on the table when the alarm went off in the bedroom. Accompanying it were a coughing fit and a string of curses that lasted the better part of a minute. The clamor stopped and then the ogre emerged, thundering his way to the table.

“I get to work from home.”

“No. Eat your oatmeal and then it’s back to bed.”

“Mike-”

“Honest to God, Harvey, you are the worst invalid ever. Finish your food and then go sleep…maybe after lunch I’ll reconsider.”

“Fine,” the brunet pouted. “This tastes okay,” he offered after a few bites. Mike sighed, knowing that his boyfriend was trying to be considerate.

\-----

Harvey stared up at the legal documents he was holding above his head. He’d managed to bug Mike enough into allowing him to work, but between the various medications he’d taken and the remaining drowsiness from his morning nap he struggled to accomplish anything.

On the other end of the couch, Mike was busily tapping away at his laptop. Harvey had thrown his feet onto the blond’s lap in jealousy of the productivity gap, but he’d merely gotten a roll of the eyes in return. The younger man tossed him a pillow and thrown a blanket over his torso a few minutes after that, along with a reminder to not to push himself too hard.

“What’s _Touraine v. Walter_?”

“Investors of an actor can be held liable for violations of federal statutes committed by said actor, regardless of any policy of the LLC, so long as knowledge can be proven; if an investor becomes aware of a violation he or she has a duty to inform all other investors,” Mike recited, barely stopping to search his mental database. “You’d know that if you weren’t so out of it. Why don’t you take another nap?”

“I can’t possibly sleep any more today. Besides, I’m just taking notes for when I start thinking normally again.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t gotten more than five pages done in an hour,” Mike scoffed as he closed his computer and set it on the coffee table. Free of it, he started rubbing the brunet’s feet.

“I can’t focus when you do that.”

“Good. Set those papers aside and close your eyes.”

“Are you trying to be my nurse or something?” he asked sarcastically, although he obeyed the command.

“Yes. Now just relax and breathe deeply,” the younger man said as he continued to massage the arches of Harvey’s feet.

“This is utterly ridiculous. In five minutes I’m getting back to work, no matter what you say,” he promised, although his eyelids already felt heavier.

Harvey woke several hours later, the smell of something delicious emanating from the kitchen. He tossed aside the blanket and stood up, following the aroma to its source. His boyfriend stood over a bubbling pot in nothing but an apron – even in his medication-fueled haze, Harvey grew rigid at the sight of the younger man’s pert posterior.

“Good. I thought I’d have to risk waking the dragon myself.”

“It’s tickling the sleeping dragon that’s dangerous, Mike. What’s for dinner?”

“Spaghetti. Before you ask, I’m only allowing you water – no wine. And definitely no scotch.”

“Yes, Nurse Ross.”

“You’d better clean your plate, too; you’ll need the energy.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I’m going to suck out the rest of the ‘poison’ afterwards so that you’ll be able to get in some more sleep,” the younger man explained, stirring the noodles.

“Are you sure you’ll be able to resist me that long?” he inquired, seizing the opportunity to grope the blond’s flank.

“I managed to restrain myself while we were on the couch this afternoon. Though, I was kind of hoping we might have some fun when I decided to stay home with you…”

“Would you like me to restrain you when you suck out the poison?” he asked, pushing his body closer against Mike’s.

“Yes, please. Oh, and could you lose those pajamas before you get in your bed tonight? They’re itchy and I hate them.”

“It’s **our** bed, idiot,” Harvey corrected with a series of spanks.

\-----

The concierge stopped Mike one night the week after, making him wait while he dug around for a package in the back room. He returned with a sheepish smile and a large pink box with a red bow on it. Mike accepted it and lugged the eyesore to the elevator.

Rachel and Donna had gotten into the habit of sending him gag gifts – a catalog for a maternity clothing store, one of those floral windbreakers elderly Korean women loved, a jack-in-the-box with a disturbingly accurate replica of Louis’ head, etc. Half the time he wondered if Jessica and Wendy weren’t in on the fun, too, or if maybe they weren’t behind it themselves. And now he wondered if he should open this box or dispose of it quickly.

Once he entered the condo and kicked off his shoes, though, Mike figured he might as well take a glance at whatever it was; there weren’t any breathing noises coming from inside, at least. He set it down on the coffee table and nervously untied the bow, opening the lid and smiling at what he saw. Inside was a white nurse’s outfit, complete with white stockings and pumps and a little hat with a red cross. Underneath the dress was a typewritten note:

_I figured you could use a new uniform, Nurse Ross._

_\- Your worst patient_

Mike shook his head but picked up the box anyway, starting for the bedroom. Harvey would be home fairly soon and the blond figured the older man should get at least one night’s worth of fun out of his purchase.

After he’d hung up his suit, Mike took a detour and retrieved the cat o’ nine tails from the bottom drawer of the dresser.


	5. Poker Playing

“Any chance I can join in this round?”

“No,” cried four voices in unison.

“C’mon, I always have to be the dealer,” Mike pouted as he shuffled the pack of cards in his hand.

“That’s because you count cards,” Harvey chided, petting a very relaxed Franklin sitting in his lap. “Isn’t that right, buddy?” he asked of the feline.

“Which isn’t illegal in any state or territory.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not cheating, kid,” Donna countered, returning to Harvey’s dinner table with a set of martinis for herself, Rachel, and Wendy, a beer for Mike, and a tumbler of scotch for the senior partner. Her hands thus freed, she set out a bowl of milk for Franklin, who leapt from the brunet’s lap to have a drink.

“Hey! Franklin is helping me win.”

“We’ve noticed,” Wendy stated, turning to face her pet. “Turncoat. I might love you unconditionally, but that doesn’t mean I won’t skip a trip to the groomers if you let Harvey crush me.”

“So, up the stakes to a five-dollar ante with a minimum raise of ten?” Donna asked as Mike began dealing to the players.

“Oooh, I think I might have to quit if we up the stakes any further,” Rachel groaned as she checked her purse. “Can we settle for a three-dollar ante? I have to save up for Stanford, even with my scholarship.”

“I’ve got a better idea: how about we combine our resources?” Wendy suggested, still flashing a warning leer at Franklin. “We’ll split any winnings we make fifty-fifty.”

“Deal,” the paralegal agreed, moving her seat (being careful to pick it up so as not to scuff the floors, Mike noticed with a relieved sigh – Uli was nuclear about that sort of thing) to join her ally.

Mike finished dealing to the players and waited for a moment while they lodged initial bets before placing the flop. Through the games they had already played tonight, he could tell that Harvey was cautiously confident of victory. Donna was a slightly more erratic player – she wasn’t betting much yet, but she might be lulling the others into starting an arms race. Wendy, who was in charge of Team Underdog, was naturally hesitant, but even that default didn’t disguise to Mike the fact that she and Rachel had a terrible hand.

“Raise – ten,” Harvey announced, moving a yellow chip into the pot before taking a swig of scotch. The flop must have been good for him, as that seemed to be his tell.

“Noooo problemo,” Donna agreed, dropping in a yellow chip of her own and turning to stare down Wendy.

“Hmmmm…alright, I’m in, too,” the other assistant agreed, ignoring the look of mild horror on Rachel’s face.

“Okay, so here’s the turn – the six of diamonds.”

It joined the seven of spades, the five of clubs, and the ace of diamonds already on the mat. Harvey quickly dropped in another twenty dollars in chips and turned to Donna, who threw in forty. Wendy and Rachel exchanged glances and summarily folded their hand.

“We need to find dumber people to gamble against,” the paralegal observed as Mike tossed out the river – the nine of clubs. “When is the next company party? I want to sponge some cash off of Durant.”

“It’s on the fourth of next month,” Donna commented as Harvey dropped eighty dollars into the pot nonchalantly. “Psh, you think you can psych me out with that maneuver, Harvey? I’ve seen hippos that were more subtle.”

“Any additional betting?” Mike asked, turning back to his boyfriend.

“Yes – two hundred.”

Mike and the two women who’d resigned both stifled gasps as the senior partner moved a pile of chips into the middle of the table. Donna surveyed the situation and followed suit herself.

“Alright; flip them over and show us what you’ve got.”

“Two pair, aces high,” Harvey announced with a smug grin, flashing his ace of clubs and seven of diamonds.

“Sorry, boss,” Donna smiled as she turned over the eight of hearts and the ten of spades. “Straight, unlike you two boys.”

“Damnit.”

Harvey was not going to be in a good mood tonight if he ended up losing; Mike placed his hand on the older man’s bicep and rubbed it soothingly. Maybe if he acted fast the worst of the whining and grumpiness could be prevented. Instead, Harvey pulled away as the players slid their cards toward him to shuffle them.

“Perhaps we should exchange places, boss,” Donna suggested. “I wouldn’t want anyone to have to suspect impropriety between the banker and his boyfriend should you win…but then that probably won’t happen, since, y’know, I just broke your streak and all.”

“Fine,” the brunet allowed, getting up from his seat and taking Donna’s. Franklin, who had finished his dessert, followed Harvey and shimmied back up to the man’s lap.

“You’d better not swing things his way again when we’ve just started making progress,” Wendy warned her pet as it meowed its appreciation for Harvey’s ear-scratching. “Momma needs a new pair of shoes.”

“And money for a decent apartment in California.”

“I’m just going to go ahead and deal now,” Mike announced awkwardly as the two women to his left listed their various proposed purchases. He could tell that they were due for some high cards, as he’d never been good at mixing in used cards with fresh ones all that well. Hopefully that would embolden the women to bet more audaciously and allow Harvey to recoup his losses.

“Since I’m flush with cash, I’ll go ahead and toss in thirty,” the redhead cried giddily, rolling her yellow chips toward the ante pile.

“Sure, whatever,” Harvey grumbled, matching her action.

Wendy mimicked them silently, and Mike laid out the flop. First came the queen of hearts, followed by the ace of hearts and the jack of spades. Mike spied the players’ reactions and caught the slight twitch of joy that Donna nearly concealed.

“Another thirty.”

“Fine.”

“…And here I thought Harvey was the one who pressed till it hurts,” Wendy grumbled. “Yeah, we’re in.”

“For the turn…the ten of hearts.”

Mike caught Rachel perform a fist-pump underneath the table. She was such a hypocrite, always scolding him for doing that at the office and then celebrating over a game that wasn’t even finished. He'd have stuck his tongue out at her, but he wasn't mean enough to give away their hand.

“Sixty.”

Harvey peeked at his cards again with the slightest twinge of glumness visible around his eyes. He nearly set them aside in defeat, but Franklin raised his tail and glared at the older man until he returned them to their spot.

“You’d better be right about this, Franklin. Sixty it is.”

“Umm…we don’t have sixty on us. Should we go all in, Rachel?” Wendy asked, turning to her compatriot.

“Hell yes,” the paralegal offered, pushing their chips into the heap.

“Okay, folks. Now the river…and we have the queen of clubs. Will there be any more betting?”

“It’s getting late and I’m going to win anyway; all in,” Donna called, thrusting the enormous pile of chips into the center. She turned to her boss, goading him to follow her lead with a raised eyebrow.

For his part, the older man glanced at his cards again and consulted with the cat resting on his lap. Franklin had his tail up again, and now he forcefully pressed a paw to the older man’s elbow.

“I take it that’s my final warning. Fine – I’m all in, too.”

“Are you sure, Harvey?” Mike asked, concerned that Harvey’s ire might not fade for several days if he lost.

“Observe my position carefully, rookie,” Harvey answered as Franklin turned to scowl at the blond.

“Yeah, I get what you’re saying. Okay, Donna, you’re up first.”

“I’ve got a full house: queens – again, not so unlike the two of you – high with a pair of jacks. Beat that, suckers.”

Rachel and Wendy both deflated in an instant, tossing aside a pair of pocket tens they had obviously hoped formed an essential three-of-a-kind for their own full house. Mike turned to the senior partner, whose ashen face seemed to broadcast defeat.

Crap. And he was really hoping to kick back with some _Star Trek_ and sex after the guests left, too.

“Oh that’s right, boss – you ain’t got nuthin’,” Donna hollered, preparing to snatch up the pile of chips.

“Don’t be so sure about that, Donna,” Harvey spoke quietly as the corners of his lips rose. He flipped first the jack and then the king of hearts. “It looks like Franklin was right in the end: royal flush.”

“You traitor!” Wendy scolded as the cat hopped off Harvey’s lap again and fled to the guest bathroom.

Donna turned her face from the cards to her boss and narrowed her eyes. It seems she should have known about this maneuver, too.

“Cat nothing. You intentionally lost big last round to fool me into believing I had all the luck so you could sucker punch me for everything.”

“Yup. Oh, by the way, thanks for assisting my act, Mike. I don’t think I would have pulled it off without the nervous boyfriend routine.”

“Uh, yeah. That was some real acting on my part, huh? Totally believable, but in no way authentic, ‘cause that’s me-”

“Mike, you might be able to count cards, but your deception couldn’t get a lie past the mind of a preschooler,” Donna jabbed as Harvey scooped in all the chips.

“Go easy on him. I’m willing to share my wealth, provided I get some consideration in return,” the brunet offered.

“How much?” Rachel asked, calculating the value of the pile.

“One hundred for each of you.”

“And what do we have to do?”

“First of all, we get Franklin for a week.”

“Next week.”

“Deal.”

“And?” Donna asked warily, polishing off the last of her martini.

“No sassmouth from you for a month.”

“Two weeks.”

“Three. Do you want that green dress you were gushing about to me or not?”

“I wasn’t gushing…three it is.”

“And Rachel, I need you to assist Harold with that Canadian case Louis dumped on him. He doesn’t know anything _aboot_ the law up there,” Harvey explained, grinning at his own awful joke.

“I’ll do my best to keep Missy Deitler from ‘assisting’ him in any way possible, at least,” she agreed.

Harvey handed the women their money in turn, Wendy taking hers first so she could coax out her still in-hiding pet.

“Franklin, it’s okay. Mommy’s not really mad at you, but you know how I feel about the way you favor Papa Harvey over me at times like this,” she cooed, causing the ball of fluff to return to the living room. “Let’s go home and watch a crappy horror movie together, okay?”

At the word “movie” Franklin jumped into Wendy’s arms and cuddled against his owner’s chest. She retrieved the leash from her purse and clipped it to the cat’s collar, rising to her feet as it led the way to the coat closet.

“See you again in a week, Franklin,” Harvey called.

“Mreeeeeaaaaawr.”

“Are you three alright to make it home?” Mike asked as Donna opened the door for the other two.

“At least there’s one altruistic man on this planet,” the redhead snarked as she nodded. Harvey and Mike made sure the three humans and the cat made it safely inside the elevator before shutting the door.

“So, are we done with card games for the night?”

“Not yet. I was thinking of continuing.”

“Ugh. Really? But it’s not like you need any money from me, anyway.”

“Not for money. Strip poker.”

“That makes even less sense. You’ve seen me naked plenty of times.”

“That’s why I’m adding a rule: last one with clothes gets to pick his favored position for the post-match celebration.”

“Now that you put it that way…”

“Is that a ‘yes’?”

“Yes. I’m totally going to win, and we both know it.”

“Sure. Wait here.”

“Huh? Where are you going?”

“To get a fresh pack of cards. You didn’t think I was going to play you with the deck you’ve been memorizing all night, did you?”

“No fair,” Mike pouted as he resumed his seat at the table.

“We’re lawyers, Mike. Nobody said anything about fairness,” Harvey scoffed from his office. “And before you say something smart, that rule goes for fake lawyers, too.”

"Okay, but you have to admit that last hand of yours was pretty much us in a nutshell."

"What was that?" Harvey inquired over the sound of a drawer opening.

"The king of hearts together with his noble jack. Think about it."

"I take offense to that comparison," the brunet stated flatly as he walked back to the kitchen. "If anything, I'm the king of diamonds, not hearts."

"Liar. You might be able to fool Donna with your poker face, but I know you way too well, stud."

"Let's just see about that, babe," Harvey remarked ominously as he shuffled the cards in his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter of Honey Trap is going to be a little late (maybe tomorrow night or possibly Thursday), so I thought I'd give you one of these as a way of apologizing. I'm sorry, and I hope this makes up for my tardiness.
> 
> Also, I had to write down their hands to keep track of all the cards. A Mensa member I am not.


	6. Shocking Developments

“Mike, I have to tell you something…but I don’t know how.”

“Harvey, when have you ever not just said what was on your mind? Just tell me.”

Mike waited as the senior partner leaned back in his chair and inhaled deeply, looking around the room from his record collection to the line of basketballs beside the window.

“Mike…this could change everything about us.”

“What? Donna is moving out of New York?” the blond asked, expecting a grin – that this was all just some dumb joke Harvey cooked up to humiliate him. “Jessica is retiring? She-who-must-not-be-named called you?”

“It’s bigger than that, Mike.”

“Jesus, Harvey. Tell me what it is and we can work through it together.”

“Mike…” Harvey started again, swiveling his chair to face the window before rethinking it and turning back to the blond. “Mike…I’m pregnant.”

“What?!” the younger man cried. “Oh ho, you got me, Harvey.”

“I’m not joking, Mike.”

“…What?”

“I told you we should have used condoms until you got your vasectomy. Mike, I’m eight weeks pregnant; the doctor says we’ll have a son in another thirty.”

“Jesus, Harvey. What the hell are we going to do?”

“Why do you think I’m asking you, idiot? I’m not a kids person, and I can’t exactly tell Jessica that her best partner is going to be gone on paternity leave for three months.”

“Do…do you want me to start working from home so that I can raise him?”

“I don’t know yet, Mike. Christ, I don’t know anything about any of it. Last night I had a craving for marshmallows so bad I bought out half the stock at the bodega around the corner from the building.”

“Fuck. We’ll get through this, Harvey. I promise I’ll be with you no matter what choices we make, okay?”

“Thanks, Mike.”

“I have to go get a brief to Jessica, though. Do you mind if we table this discussion until the end of the day?”

“I think I’d prefer it, actually. I have a client and…I’m going to have to get through client meetings with a baby bump.”

Mike rounded Harvey’s desk and gave the older man a gentle hug, earning a nod as appreciation. A second later the brunet waved him off and he exited the corner office, turning to see if Donna had any advice for him, but she wasn’t at her desk.

“Holy shit. We’re going to be dads,” he said to himself as he began his trek to the other side of the office.

“How dare you show your face to me after what you’ve done!”

Mike turned his head up from the floor and caught sight of Rachel and Donna standing in Louis’ office, its owner seated at his desk.

“After what I’ve done?” Donna threw back, hurling one of Louis’ portraits into the wall. “It was you who ran over Snuffles. How could you do that to our daughter’s favorite puppy, you insensitive ass!?”

“You never gave a shit about that damn dog, you heartless bitch. And why did you have to bring your sister along just to scold me? You always do that! You always hold your family over me just because mine lives in Arizona!”

“I told Tatiana that she should never marry you. You are a feeble-minded man who does not know how to appreciate a real woman!”

“And I must tell you,” Louis cried before pausing dramatically, “that you are not sisters. In fact, she,” he said, pointing to Rachel, “is your mother.”

“What?! Esperanza, is this the truth?”

“Yes, it is my greatest shame,” Rachel sobbed as she collapsed in a corner of the office. “When I was but thirteen, a former classmate, who had enlisted in the expeditionary force to fight the Chupacabra, took me and granted me the greatest pleasure of my life.”

Donna (Tatiana?) and Louis gasped and covered their mouths in confusion. To be honest, Mike was pretty taken aback, too.

“But as the weeks passed, mother discovered my secret and forced me into hiding. When I had birthed you, she snatched you from me and did not allow me to see you again until you were eight and had already assumed her to be your mother.”

“Esperanza!” Donna cried before fainting.

“Tatiana! No!” Rachel screamed, rushing to her. “Tatiana! Tatiana! You must not die – you are my only child!”

Louis leaned back in his chair and cackled like a cartoon villain.

“Leopold! You wicked man, you have struck Tatiana dead with this calamitous news. How dare you enjoy this moment?!”

“It was your sexual frivolity which caused this dissolution.”

“I’m afraid that I, too, have shocking news. Tatiana…was your daughter.”

“What?!”

“Yes, Leopold. For before you lost your memory in that boating accident, you were the handsome teenage soldier who showed me what true love is.”

“No! No, this cannot be true!” Louis lamented, lunging to the floor. “Tatianaaaaaaaaaa!”

Mike’s eyes bulged as he watched Rachel and Louis writhe on the floor, Donna remaining perfectly still. He made a mental note to throw out his coffee and not consume any of the leftover bagels in the break room as he rushed along to Jessica’s office.

Luckily she was at her desk, so he could drop off her documents and finish up the arguments that Louis had requested this morning. With any luck, he’d be back to normal by the time he was finished.

“どこから来た？”

“Jessica…what?”

“何をしいる，マイクさん？この朝僕が「マイクさんは顧客との会合に日本へ行く必要がある」と言った。”

“Jessica, all I heard in that was my name. What the hell is going on here today?”

“英語を話すことはいけませんよ！”

“G-gomen?”

“それでいい、マイクさん。”

Mike set down Jessica’s brief and did an about face, hurrying to get back to the associate’s pool before someone else decided to act completely out of character.

“동생, 노마의생일카드를잊지마세요!”

Too late.

Mike sprinted past Wendy’s desk, missing the rest of what was saying. He’d definitely need to call the utility company and have them find whatever the Joker or Scarecrow had slipped into the water supply, but first he’d need to get away from these whackjobs.

A tap on the shoulder caught him completely off guard.

“Mike?”

“Steve, what are you doing up here?”

“Have people been acting a little strange up here? I have this weird feeling that something isn’t right, so I told Bob from maintenance to cover me while I popped up to this floor.”

“God, I’m so glad you did. People are speaking foreign languages that they shouldn't know, inventing false identities, and Harvey is pregnant.”

“Jesus, at least we can keep ourselves sane, right?”

“Yeah. I felt like I might go crazy, too.”

“Oh, by the way, I told your attorney, but…I cut the yacht in half with a chainsaw.”

“Huh?”

“We’ve both been a little less than sane about the whole divorce thingie, and I guess I lost it after you said that you weren’t going to give me the house in the Berkshires.”

“Steve, I…”

\-----

“Mike! Mike, wake up!”

“I’m up, I’m up,” the blond cried as he picked himself up off his desk, stray papers flitting down to the floor as he did.

“It’s time to go home, Mike.”

“Harvey? Is Esperanza okay?”

“Who?”

“And Leopold and Tatiana!”

“What are you talking about, rookie?”

“Jessica wanted something from me but she only spoke in Japanese!”

Harvey quirked an eyebrow as the blond pointed his fingers in one direction after another, listing an ever more surreal series of events.

“And you! You’re pregnant! Harvey, what are we going to do about the baby-”

“Mike, do I need to give you remedial lessons on basic human biology? Wait a minute,” the senior partner warned as he grabbed one of the documents on the floor. “Didn’t I tell you to get through those divorce proceedings early so you wouldn’t risk falling asleep while reading them?”

“Huh?”

“And no more late-night foreign dramas on Netflix, either. Christ, at least you didn’t let a client catch you wigging out.”

“‘Wigging out’? Seriously, Harvey?”

“You’re the one who thought he got me pregnant, Mike.”

“It was a very compelling dream, stud.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Harvey shook his head dismissively. “I’m going to have Ray stop at the grocery store on the way home so I can grab some marshmallows. You want anything?”

Mike stopped and stared at the brunet.

“You ass. You were listening the whole time – why didn’t you wake me up earlier?”

“Not my job, babe,” Harvey smirked. “And why in God’s name would I crave marshmallows? That’s got to be the girliest snack ever invented.”

“Hey! S’mores aren’t girly.”

“Little boyscouts eat them around campfires, so yes, they are.”

“I don’t agree,” Mike muttered as he hefted the strap of his messenger bag over his shoulder.

“We can argue about this in the car,” Harvey suggested, making his way to the elevator. “But just for the record? There’s no way I’m wrong about this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't consume too many K-dramas in a single sitting; the makjang alone will make your head explode.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> TATIANAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!


	7. Moving Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back from my time away from the site, and I'm going to begin adding more shorts that continue from the timeline of Honey Trap. These entries will follow one another more or less in chronological order, unlike the previous chapters.
> 
> First up, the day Mike finally left that travesty of an apartment out in Brooklyn.

“Dude!”

“Don’t call me that. Hurry and get in – I don’t want to be stuck spending the whole day moving your stuff, Mike.”

“Who rents a 60s Mustang for moving?” the blond asked as he slid into the passenger seat, his annoyed boyfriend tapping a finger against the steering wheel. “Not that I’m complaining, but doesn’t the car club have something more practical?”

“I’m not going to ask Vivian for a station wagon,” Harvey informed before he revved the engine, drowning out the possibility for a response.

It was still early on Saturday morning, but the two of them were both fed (Harvey had actually eaten one of Mike’s omelettes without gagging or complaining…too much), caffeinated, and ready to sever the younger man’s contractual obligations to his home borough. Mike snuck a glance at the brunet and smiled; he guessed that despite Harvey’s grumpy expression, he was actually thrilled to show off his driving skills.

“This isn’t just a ‘60s Mustang’, Mike. It’s the 1965 Shelby custom – do you even know how many of these were made?”

“Uhhh, no.”

“And you call yourself a man,” Harvey scolded, shaking his head as he slowed for the red light. “There are only fifteen in the tri-state area, and ten are owned by Simon Gregoire.”

“Should I be familiar with that name?”

“He’s a hedge fund manager, so yes – yes, you should know him, since he’s a potential new client. But that’s not the point. Simon Gregoire is a dumpy, wimpy loser outside of the office; he owns ten Shelby Mustangs but he never takes a single one out of his showroom,” the older man lectured as he reached out and stroked the dashboard. “A car like this needs to be appreciated out on the road.”

“And used for hauling moving boxes?”

“I had Donna arrange for professional movers to get all the big stuff – either to the storage room in the basement of the condo or the landfill. From what I saw when I was there, it’ll probably be more the latter-”

“Didn’t you say Marcus would need to borrow some furniture when he gets back? We’d better hold onto it until he has a chance to look it all over.”

“I swear, between the two of you we’re never going to get rid of all your old, broken IKEA crap,” Harvey muttered as he accelerated through the deserted intersection.

“Hey, my stuff is not from IKEA. In fact, most of what I’ve got are heirlooms from Grammy-”

“What would she call it, then?”

“…Crap.”

“Exactly.”

“Look, I came up with an idea while you were getting dressed,” Mike pivoted quickly, reaching into his pocket. “I brought some Post-its with me; while I sever the lease with my landlord, you just stick one of these on anything you’re okay with having in your condo.”

“ _Our condo_ …you’re sure your landlord won’t have any issues with you trying to get out early?”

“You saw my building, Harvey. Rollo’s a nice guy, but he’d never pass up the opportunity to take in a new tenant.”

“I still can’t believe that anyone chooses to live there.”

“Not everyone can be the best damn closer this city has ever seen,” Mike mocked, cracking the window open as they turned onto the Williamsburg Bridge.

\-----

Harvey cautiously unlocked the door to Mike’s apartment, readying a tissue over his mouth with the other hand in case it stunk worse than the stairwell. He pushed against the warped wood gently, but when it failed to give an inch he resorted to kicking it out of the way.

God, what a dump.

The brunet trod past the couch (trash) and television (museum, maybe) to the sink, where he happily noted the clean, though unmatched, flatware; he hurriedly dumped the various spoons, knives, and forks into a plastic bag he’d brought with him to set aside for Marcus. Turning to the cupboards, he glanced over the many chipped plates and old, hairline-cracked glasses. By some fortitude he didn’t know he had, Harvey resisted the urge to accidentally smash them all on the floor. The older man did, however, extract a couple of coffee mugs – one featuring Darth Vader, the other a bicycle – so Mike would have more than just the one Donna had given him.

Harvey checked his watch – Mike would probably be another five or ten minutes, especially with the way he was so needlessly amiable about negotiations.

The older man smirked and made his way to the blond’s “bedroom”, throwing open the top drawer of his nightstand. As he suspected, there were several half-empty boxes of cheap condoms and store brand lube, along with a heap of small change, a rusty whistle, a single white sock with a hole in the sole, two pairs of pink earbuds, a sticker from the previous year’s pride parade, and a stack of takeout menus. The larger compartment underneath was empty save for a pair of cycling shorts that were worn dangerously thin in the crotch.

Harvey grunted his rising erection back into place and slammed both drawers shut, deciding to shift the focus of his snooping to the bathroom instead. The odd bulge in one of the couch’s cushions did not escape his notice as he doubled back through the living room, but he didn’t want to risk putting his hand in there until he was sure there wasn’t anything venomous waiting to bite him.

The brunet swung open the medicine cabinet and was taken aback as a compact fell into the sink. Pinned to the back wall by a box of floss were directions on how to apply drag make-up scribbled out in someone else’s handwriting.

He always knew Mike could pull off being a lady.

Aside from that, though, there wasn’t anything particularly extraordinary – a crusty tube of lip balm and a knee brace (Harvey guessed they were from the younger man’s bike messenger days), and a Halloween fake blood kit were the only standouts. Mike’s razor looked a couple of months old, so the brunet chucked it in the bin as he examined the crack running down the side of the toilet.

“Harvey?”

“In here.”

“What are you doing in the bathroom?”

“Do you want to tell me about your drag queen days, Mike?” Harvey smirked as the blond appeared in the doorway.

“Shut up,” Mike grunted as he swiped for the note Harvey waved through the air. “That was a long time ago; I just needed a little extra money, and it’s not like it’s illegal.”

“Oh, it’s perfectly legal. It’s also completely hilarious,” Harvey chuckled. “What was your drag name? Michaelia Jackson?”

“I didn’t use my name for…it was ‘Alabastra’, okay?”

Harvey actually snorted as leaned back on the sink, allowing Mike to snatch the note away and shove it in his pocket.

“Hey, wait a minute,” the blond ordered as he turned back to the main room. “I don’t see any Post-its anywhere…”

Harvey smacked one of the yellow squares on the younger man’s forehead, a smirk still plastered to his own face.

“Real funny, Harvey. Y’know, just because I’m moving out of here doesn’t mean I have to move in with you. If this is all just a joke to you I could find someplace else to live.”

“And pay for your own cable?”

“Touché. But I get to bring the panda painting with me.”

“Fine.”

“And my Xbox and Wii.”

“I don’t mind your wii, Mike.”

“Oh, shut up and put that stuff in a box – _gently_ , I might add. I’m going to start on my books.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Harvey joked as he went to unplug the two game consoles. “By the way, I already checked out your nightstand, but what have you got hidden underneath the couch cushion?”

“I don’t have-”

“I was a teenager, too, Mike. Did you think I wouldn’t figure out your obvious hiding spots?”

“There’s nothing-”

Mike leapt for the couch but Harvey leapt faster, holding back the younger man with a pillow while he fished about with his free hand. He caught the plastic pages of the magazines and extracted them, causing the blond to slump down onto the floor.

“Now _these_ are some antiques,” the brunet clucked as he flickered through the smutty images.

“Nobody ever found those and then both of you had to-”

“Both of whom? Wait…did Wendy find these when she brought over your work?”

“No, worse.”

“J-Jessica?!” Harvey checked incredulously, howling with laughter as the younger man nodded. “Goddamn, Mike! That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Jessica Pearson…finding your porn stash…Christ, I think I need to lie down for a minute.”

“Shut up!” Mike shouted as he fled for the bookcases.

“I’m never going to forget this,” Harvey pledged as set down the back issues of _Hustler_ and returned to the game systems. “In fact, I think I’ll have you drive back so I can read you the articles you probably never noticed.”

Harvey turned back when he failed to hear a witty response, catching the back of the blond’s head.

“What’s wrong? Did I hurt your feelings, Mike?”

“Umm, Harvey, I can’t drive.”

“What, you let your license lapse?”

“No, I mean…I never learned how to drive…” Mike trailed off as his focus turned to the floor, his cheeks reddening more with each passing moment.

“Ugh, you really are a brat.”

“Are you ashamed of me now?”

“No, but I’m going to drop you off at the DMV while I drop these boxes off and return the car. You’re going to get your learner’s permit, and tomorrow I’m going to give you a driving lesson.”

“That’s okay, Harvey. It’s not like I need to-”

“I’m not doing all the driving when we’re out in California. Now hurry up and finish packing those books; this day just became more jam-packed, and I don’t want to get consumption from hanging around in this plague house.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gladly take all comments...hint, hint.


	8. Driving Lessons

“You sound more like Harold right now than I’d like to acknowledge, Mike. Oh, by the way, you might want to watch out for that bus.”

“Ahh!”

“Keep your cool.”

“I am driving for the first time ever,” Mike noted, his hands shaking on the steering wheel, “and we’re in frigging Midtown-“

“It’s Sunday afternoon, not rush hour. Besides, people learn best by diving in the deep end…red light ahead.”

“First of all, no they don’t,” Mike corrected as he slammed down on the brake pedal just fast enough to avoid the minivan ahead of them. “Second, I should have told Grammy I loved her when I took her back to the care facility earlier today. At this rate I’ll never get to see her again.”

“Jessica dumped you in the firm without any training, and I never hear you complain about that,” Harvey noted, not quite disguising the note of offense as he pretended to examine his fingernails.

“She gave me a stack of legal books to memorize everything before I started, and we’re corporate lawyers, anyway.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not exactly fighting for innocent guys on death row, Harvey.”

“No, we’re fighting for hundreds of millions of dollars, and occasionally for the privilege of smacking obnoxious tycoons down to earth.”

“So you admit you like taking pro bonos?” Mike smirked, turning to thrust his tongue at the brunet even as another bead of nervous sweat coasted down his forehead.

“Sure. When else would Harold be able to improve his courtroom procedure?” the older man blocked, seemingly effortlessly. “By the way, the light turned green five seconds ago.”

“Huh?- oh shit!”

“You’d better not scratch the car.”

“That kind of reminder is both unnecessary and unhelpful.”

“It’s not a reminder, Mike, it’s a warning. I’m not paying the bill to the car club if you damage this M5.”

“Why couldn’t we have rented a Hyundai instead of a Beemer?” Mike groaned, praying there was enough space between him and the erratic cabbie in the next lane. “Or anything more practical than one of your-”

“The M5 has hand-stitched leather seats; this way we’ll be comfortable even as you kill us both with your wretched braking.”

“It’s my _first time driving_!”

“Excuses, excuses.”

“Whose copy of _Brawl_ did we play with last night after unpacking?” Mike demanded. “I didn’t even laugh when you figured out that you’re best with Princess Peach.”

“Kiss my parasol, Olimar.”

“My purple Pikmin kicked your butt.”

“That cyclist doesn’t look like he’s going to wait for us.”

“Wha-”

In a blur, Harvey pounded his fist against the side of Mike’s right thigh, causing him to switch to the brake pedal in time to watch a careless nut on a bike flip the bird at them.

“Fuck!”

“You’d better start moving again before that Montclairite behind us gets out of his Land Rover and takes a swing at us with one his golf clubs.”

“I can’t do this, Harvey.”

“Yes you can, Mike. Foot on the gas; keep going.”

“No, I mean I can’t do this like this,” Mike elaborated, turning right off of the avenue.

“What, you wanna practice on the FDR? It’ll be a little hectic getting over there-”

“Just make sure I don’t crash and I’ll handle the destination,” Mike swore, praying he could reach the one person capable of ending this nightmare before he died of a heart attack.

\-----

“Y’know, I could have saved you both the trouble and just told you how terrible an idea this was from the start.”

“Why are we getting my assistant involved in this, Mike?”

“Shut up, Reggie, and get out of my seat,” Donna ordered as she tapped her shoe against the sidewalk.

“I was here-”

“The backseat or the trunk: it’s your choice.”

“Fine, but I’m only doing this because I’m a gentleman,” the older man growled as he released his seatbelt. “In fact, we were doing just fine before we got here, thus saving you the inconvenience to your weekend.”

“Really? Because your boyfriend looks awfully wan,” the redhead cut back as she dodged the door Harvey shoved open. “And I didn’t know there were that many shades of pale.”

“I do have a bit of a tan,” Mike argued lamely, earning pitying looks from both of his companions.

“Making me sit in the back like a kid-”

“Harvey, nobody’s perfect at everything. You’re a good lawyer, but you’re a terrible teacher.”

“Harold is-”

“Harold is a saint for everything we’ve put him through,” Donna countered, adjusting _her_ seat forward, “and a good lawyer because of my gentle prodding. If it were up to you alone, he’d still be sobbing in the little boys’ room.”

“I helped Mike to parallel park just now.”

“There isn’t a car behind this one.”

“It’s still an accomplishment.”

“For you, I suppose,” Donna judged before turning back to Mike. “Are you ready to start driving again?”

“I’m still a little jumpy.”

“Go through the processes. What should you do when you’re pulling out into traffic?”

“I need to back up so I can turn easily,” Mike spoke as he began the task. “Then I need to check for a break in traffic and signal my intent.”

“Yup, and you should check for jaywalking pedestrians, too. Once you’ve gotten used to the mental checklist, driving isn’t so daunting, is it?”

“Psh, I already taught him that.”

“I will cram one of those disgustingly business-casual chukka boots down your throat.”

Harvey rolled his eyes and turned his attention to the building across the street. Sure enough, Mike managed their reunion into the sea of cars expertly now that Donna was guiding him.

“Good work, Goldie Con. I probably would have started you off in a parking lot somewhere not on Manhattan, though.”

“Harvey didn’t exactly give me a choice.”

“Let’s head down toward the financial district. It should be a bit less clogged on the weekend, and the non-perpendicular intersections will be good training.”

“Sounds like a plan, chief.”

“Do remember to mind the bus lane.”

“Got it.”

“And watch out for that cabbie trying to pass us on the right…wait, never mind. I’ll take care of him.”

“Wait, what are you going to-”

Harvey watched with a smirk as Donna rolled down her window and extended her hands out of the car as claws. Once she had the driver’s attention, she let loose a dead-on Xenomorph scream.

The taxi driver quickly decelerated.

“That was-”

“I know. You see, cabbies are incapable of respecting the personal space of most drivers, but they will back off if they’re unsure of your mental soundness…or status as a human being. Don’t worry – we can practice that move on Louis at the office during our lunch break.”

“Any objections to that idea, cap’n?” Mike asked as he slowed for a yellow light.

“Fine, sure, whatever.”

“Hey, on second thought, let’s turn right here.”

“What’s down that road?”

“Oh no,” Harvey swore as he looked up at the sign by the traffic light.

“It’s not important for you, Mike.”

“Yeah, okay,” the blond answered as he waited for a convertible before switching onto the side street.

“How good are you at parallel parking, actually?”

“Umm…”

“Alright, go a little bit further and then back up and turn in. We’ll have Harvey get out and assist if you need it.”

Mike did as instructed; he wasn’t terrible, but he braked a little too often and struggled with remembering to switch gears. The camera in the rear window (the actual reason Harvey’d insisted on this particular vehicle) helped immensely, allowing the novice driver to wedge them into the tight spot after about a minute filled with prayers and swears.

“Okay, so why did we park here?”

“The Hermès store is right up there,” Donna explained as she clicked herself free of her seatbelt. “And Harvey still owes me two bags, plus a pair of boots if I’m going to keep helping you learn to drive before your trip.”

Harvey kicked the back of his assistant’s seat.

“Hey, there’s something in it for you, too, boss. You can pick out another new tie for Mike’s non-skinny collection.”

“I’m not getting you anything more than two bags.”

“Ugh, fine. But just for that, I’m going to make sure Wendy seats you next to Paul in Bankruptcy at the company party,” Donna threatened as she waited for him to get out of the car and open her door for her. “Oh who I am kidding? Be patient for me, my lovelies – mommy is on her way!”

The redhead sprinted out of the car and on towards the store, leaving Harvey shaking his head. Mike slid over the console and exited through the passenger side, as well, looking sorely apologetic.

“Look, I’m sorry about-”

“Don’t worry about it, babe. My checking account’s day of reckoning was coming, anyway.”

“You’re sure?”

Harvey leaned in and pressed a kiss to the blond’s lips as he shut the car door.

“What was that for?”

“You’re way further with your driving than I thought you’d be. Besides, do I need a reason to kiss my boyfriend?”

Mike squeezed him into a tight hug and nuzzled his stubbly face against Harvey’s cheek.

“And maybe I’m not the best teacher,” Harvey began as Mike rolled his eyes and kissed him again. “You want a new tie? I think you’ve earned it.”

“Lead the way, stud,” Mike nodded, and the older man did just that, threading his fingers through the blond’s. Donna, for her part, was already getting the store’s concierge to show her the limited edition model in the window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos to anyone who caught my use of the Post-its in last week's chapter from that fourth season episode of Girlfriends where Toni "helps" Joan clean her house in a futile attempt to decide between Brock and Ellis. Tracee Ellis Ross is a goddess.


	9. Conventioning

“Tommy, Sam, don’t go running off!”

“Mom, we need to get tickets to see the Avengers special trailer and making-of video before they run out. If we miss this showing we’ll have to wait until three o’clock!”

“Three!” Tommy’s younger brother cried in unison, complete with hands on his hips and an indignant stare.

“We won’t be leaving for dinner until eight, so we have plenty of time to see the trailer. Don’t you want to see the Green Lantern?”

“Mo~m!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Tommy likes _Green Goblin_ , not Green Lantern!”

“Yeah, remember the time you told my friends I like Aqua Man? Everybody thought I was uncool for a week.”

“A week!”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m sure Dad wouldn’t make a mistake like that, but you know comics aren’t Mommy’s specialty. I’m trying to learn, though…do you forgive me?”

“Okay,” Tommy nodded after a slight pause. “I wish he didn’t have to go to that business meeting in Honk Honk, China. But still, we gotta get those tickets!”

“We gotta!” Sam repeated with a dramatic arm thrust into the air.

“That’s _Hong Kong_ , Tommy. Now, do you two know where they’re giving them out?”

“Uhh…” Tommy mumbled as he gazed around the convention center. They’d only explored about half of the building thus far, and he couldn’t make out any signs through the throngs of his favorite heroes and villains. “I thought you knew, Sam.”

“I followed you,” his younger brother replied.

“Because you’re supposed to be our nav-nav-navimagator,” the older brother lied.

“Uh-uh, Mrs. Pickens says that big brothers hafta to look out for little brothers.”

“I was looking out for you…while you were looking for the ticket booth.”

“She also said that you couldn’t draw a turkey when you were in her class last year.”

“That’s not true! I could totally draw a turkey – I just decided to give it laser beams and proton torpedo cannons.”

“Boys, boys, let’s not fight about what happened last year,” Mom pleaded as she retrieved the guidebook and began unfolding the map she’d stuffed inside it. “Just give me a minute to check this and then I can be the _navigator_ for both of you.”

Tommy exchanged eyerolls with his little brother as their mom disappeared behind the great expanse of shiny paper. He could still remember the roadtrip up to Grandma’s house in Seattle when Mom had gotten lost and taken them halfway to Boise.

“Big bro…look over there!”

“Huh?” Tommy asked as he pivoted to try and make out what his little brother was talking about. Batman was talking with Lara Croft (Dad’s favorite superhero, though Mom didn’t seem to like her very much), but as they passed along he caught sight of Sam’s favorite villain.

“Can you talk to him for me?”

“Mom, can I go talk to Carnage for Sam?”

“Don’t bother strangers, Tommy,” Mom answered, her voice muffled as she turned the map upside down.

He turned back to his little brother who looked more dejected by the second as Carnage started down a different hallway. Tommy didn’t like to disobey Mom, but he couldn’t stand to see Sam’s hopes crushed.

“Mr. Carnage, over here!”

“Tommy, what did I just-”

“But he’s not a stranger, Mom. We’ve read all about him!”

“It’s okay, ma’am,” the blood-red symbiote assured as he approached the three of them. “What’s up, little buddy? What’s your name?”

“I’m Tommy. Well, it’s my little brother, Sam…” Tommy began as Sam jumped and darted behind him. “He’s your biggest fan.”

“Yeah!” Sam cried as he stuck his head out from behind Tommy’s shoulder, only to dart back into his hiding spot.

“That’s awesome! Do you read my comics regularly?”

“You don’t have your own comics,” Tommy corrected.

“Haha, just checking. When you’re somebody like me you have to check who your fans are,” the parasite explained, looking around for spies. “I have to protect myself in case Venom or Toxin sends out underlings to try and capture me.”

“I don’t like Venom; he’s really tricky,” Sam admitted as he carefully tiptoed out from behind Tommy. “But I like you ‘cause you’re really cool and you follow your own rules. I hafta follow the rules at school, even when I don’t like ‘em.”

“Those rules are there to help you,” Carnage instructed as he squatted down to get on Tommy and his brother’s level. “Take it from me: when you break the rules it can be hard to get back on the right path. You want to grow up to be wise, strong, and happy, right?”

“Yup!”

“Then you should listen to your parents and your teachers. Plus, that way they’ll let you have free time so you can read lots of comics and novels and have your own adventures with your brother and your friends.”

“You’re so smart, Carnage!” Sam exclaimed as he ran over and hugged the surprisingly friendly villain. “Hey, can I get your auto…whatchamacallit?”

“ _Autograph_ , Sam,” Mom corrected, handing him his sketching notebook and a pen.

“Yeah, one of those!”

“Ask him nicely.”

“Mo~m,” Tommy’s little brother peeved. “Ugh, fine: Mr. Carnage, sir, may I please have your…auto…graph?”

“You certainly may,” Sam’s favorite replied enthusiastically, taking the notebook from him. “Is there any place in particular you’d like me to sign?”

“There’s some room on the first page under where Mom made me write my name and our phone number in case it gets lost.”

“Mi…ahem, Carnage, I got the tickets.”

Tommy turned his attention to the approaching man who’d just addressed the symbiote; the guy looked oddly familiar, but he couldn’t place him. Still, he definitely wasn’t a Spider-Man villain.

“Are those the tickets to the Avengers trailer?”

“Yeah,” the man answered cautiously, quickly hiding them in his pocket.

“Can you please tell us where they’re giving them out?” Tommy begged shamelessly.

“There’s a line over by the south entrance to the building, but these are the last ones for the 1:30 showing.”

“No way!” Sam cried, looking up at the black-and-orange guy standing over Carnage. “Now we’re gonna hafta wait super-duper long to watch it!”

“Hold on a sec,” Carnage assured as he stood up and motioned for the other guy to follow, still scribbling in Sam’s notebook.

Carnage said something and the ninja guy (wait – he was from Teen Titans, wasn’t he?) started to pout, folding his arms. There was some more arguing, complete with whines and furious head shaking, but eventually he handed the tickets over to Carnage before wandering off towards the water fountain.

“Here, you guys can have these tickets. There are only two, but if you mention a guy named Harvey Specter they should find an extra spot for your mom at the back.”

“Really?!” Sam asked as he took them. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Carnage!”

“You’re very welcome, Sam. And here’s your notebook back.”

While his little brother gave the red symbiote another embarrassingly oversized hug, Tommy examined the other guy as he returned to the conversation. Mr. Black-and-Orange noticed the attention and turned to him with a nonchalant gaze from behind his facemask.

“What’s the matter, Robin?”

“His name is-”

“He knows my name, Sam. Isn’t that right, Slade?”

“That’s only the name people who fear me use. You can call me ‘Deathstroke’; that is, if you’re brave enough.”

“May I have your autograph, Deathstroke?”

The big guy tapped his fingers against his elbow for a moment before extending an open palm outwards for Tommy’s notebook. He took it and fired off a quick note, not bothering to look down as he did, and he tossed the thing back to Tommy when he was finished.

“Well, in any case, thank you guys for the tickets,” Mom concluded a tad nervously, putting everything back into her purse. “I’m sure these two will wish you the best in your battles in the future, won’t you, boys?”

“Yup, yup,” Sam nodded as they waved their goodbyes. “And I’m really sorry about helping Spider-Man beat you in that video game I played over the summer with Daddy!”

“No hard feelings, Sam!”

“Remember to have your dad show you something called Star Trek, squirts!” Sla-Deathstroke called out before he disappeared back into the crowd with his symbiote companion.

\-----

“I can’t believe you gave up the tickets I waited in line for a whole fifteen minutes to get, Mike,” Harvey lamented as he and the blond watched the waiter leave their booth, orders in hand.

“Oh, poor Harvey,” Mike mocked, swatting him on the bicep. “You know Grammy and I used to wait outside in the cold of winter for hours to get cheap broadway tickets, right? But I’m sure those fifteen minutes were filled with suffering.”

“I repeat: _fifteen_. In any case, suffering is watching you stroll around in Spandex all day and not dragging you back to the hotel room. But yes, I waited in line while you went and bought video games and didn’t even get me a hot dog or a bagel, jerk.”

“I’m not the one who didn’t want to let those two little kids see the special Avengers trailer.”

“Which we aren't going to get to see, by the way.”

“Psh, it’ll go up on YouTube eventually.”

“Excuse me? I’m looking for Mike Ross, geek extraordinaire. You see, he’s the kind of guy who would never pass up the opportunity to gush about the latest Batman news or bother the IT guy with a debate about the moral system of Spock.”

“We wouldn’t have been able to watch it anyway. Didn’t you get the text blast they sent out to all the VIPs?”

“I gave my phone to you,” Harvey noted as he unzipped Mike’s backpack and started to search for it. “My costume has a lot of metal. It reacts badly to vibrations.”

“Well, they were able to get Peter Capaldi down here from a stopover in Los Angeles and he’s going to give a private interview for us,” Mike whispered so as not to cause a panic amongst the other attendees in the restaurant. “And I bought us a couple Doctor Who posters while you were in line so that we could get them signed.”

Harvey said nothing, his mouth agape.

“Besides, you can’t fool me. As much as you’re annoyed about not getting to see the trailer, you liked Tommy.”

“He seemed fairly sharp,” Harvey commented flatly as he opened his messages.

“Those two brothers reminded you of you and Marcus, didn’t they?”

“Now you’re getting delusional, Mike. Hey, look at this – Donna texted me to let me know that some businessman in Hong Kong wants to speak to me about representation when I get back to the office. See that: I don’t even have to be in New York to be the best damned closer in the city.”

“Somehow I don’t think we have the full story just yet.”

“It’s okay, Mike. You can be jealous of my amazing legal skills – I won’t mind,” Harvey mocked, sticking his tongue out at the obnoxious, dorky, sexy (damn that Spandex) genius.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Carnage & Deathstroke: best damn crossover villainous duo ever. And just because, you get this scene a little early.


	10. In a Haze

“I warned you you’d have a hangover if you kept drinking last night. Here, catch.”

“Don’t worry – we were in our hotel room, not behind the wheel,” Mike assured honestly to the rental car manager as he just barely managed to catch the ticket his annoyingly functional boyfriend lobbed his way. Adjusting his sunglasses, he pulled the keys to the Porsche they’d borrowed for most of the week out of his pocket and slid them across the counter. The guy didn’t seem particularly convinced, but after checking the blond’s signature and eyeing the ferocious German machine through the window once more, he sighed and waved him on towards airport security.

Mike made his way to the end of the long line of exasperated parents and rambunctious children and sighed himself – he wasn’t going anywhere fast, and nobody was being quiet.

Their vacation had gone…well, it had pretty much been perfect. A couple of days in San Diego refilling their internal geek tanks, including a surprising revelation in the form of Harvey’s naked joy at acquiring a Kite Man statuette, elapsed before they both realized they were conventioned out.

(In defense of their nerd pride, neither Mike nor Harvey was going to reveal that to anyone…besides Donna, who rescheduled their itinerary from the office.)

Mike had wanted to get to see some the sights in Los Angeles, anyway, and one of Harvey’s clients was a major investor in a bunch of vineyards in Napa, hence the copious amounts of wine each of the previous nights and, ultimately, Mike’s hangover.

For that matter, where the heck was Harvey?

Mike scanned the line and couldn’t spot his boyfriend ahead of him, but when he panned over he could spot those trademark brunet tufts on the other side of the x-ray machines. The bastard must have used his ‘look at me, I’m so rich and special’ express security pass.

Damn him.

There still being several large families ahead of him, Mike decided to roll through the mental tapes unclouded by his current condition to assemble what he’d learned about his boyfriend during the previous week:

  *        There was the aforementioned predilection for Kite Man, though the blond wasn’t sure if that was ironic kitsch (a rare embodiment of Harvey’s elusive fruity side?) or sincere admiration of a villain whose whole essence could be summed up in two words.
  *        Harvey Specter wore khaki shorts on vacation. Harvey Specter also wore flip-flops on vacation. Sometimes both together, which didn’t, as Mike feared, cause the end of the world. It did, however, cause him to wonder if Rene was aware of this habit. Or Donna, for that matter.
  *        The brunet shaved his feet. Mike had known this for a while; hell, he’d even seen them in daylight before when they’d tanned nude on the deck of the older man’s condo, but…well, he’d never really given it much thought until they spent an afternoon at Venice Beach. It did help to explain the older man’s mild foot fetish.
  *        Harvey could get pretty damn tipsy, but never completely drunk. There was even a moment during the previous night when Mike was positive the older man had crossed the line, but he’d jumped the gun.



Harvey was sharing the story of how he and Louis, as associates, had TPed Hardman’s office over a bullshit five-thousand page discovery assignment the former managing partner had dumped in the bullpen late on Friday night. Apparently, when Louis left to get a few more rolls, Harvey upped the ante and pissed in the corner behind the potted plant.

At that confession, Mike sat up in his corner of the bed and asked the brunet if he’d only done that the one time, and Harvey shot back that knowing smirk with a quirked eyebrow that informed him he wouldn’t be getting a direct answer anytime soon. It was proof that Harvey was still anticipating his thought processes, even with three empty bottles of Merlot sitting on the nightstand.

  *        Mike’s boyfriend had a massive exhibitionist kink. He’d given Mike road head, fucked him at just about every scenic overlook, and even cajoled him into screwing on the beach at two in the morning. The only place they hadn’t had any action was…



“Sir, please set down your bag, empty your pockets, and step into the body scanner.”

“Huh? Oh, my bad,” the blond mumbled back to the beleaguered TSA agent, tossing his wallet and keys into the outthrust plastic bin. “Shit, where did I leave my phone?”

“Your phone’s in your other hand, sir.”

“Crap, I’m really sorry. Would you believe it’s only my second trip by plane?” Mike asked as he set down his sunglasses and carefully trod into the x-ray machine, shielding his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Frankly, yes. Now put your arms at your side and please keep still.”

“I’m like a stone.”

“Including your mouth, sir,” she cut back dryly as an equally irritable man watched the monitor beside her. “Okay, sir. Please move along.”

“Thanks for-”

“Move along.”

Mike bit his tongue and retrieved his belongings, nearly toppling over when he kicked his shoes on. It was times like this he was glad he was an associate and wouldn’t be getting another chance to fly for a while.

When he finally reached the end of terminal seven, Mike again found himself devoid of the brunet’s presence. The blond tried to imagine what the other man was thinking: the bagel place? No the older man had already scheduled three extra long sparring sessions with Nick to burn the “five pounds” he’d allegedly gained. (There hadn’t been a man, woman…or hell, even a dog that hadn’t turned its head to stare slack-jawed as he got out of the ocean the other day.) He probably wouldn’t be at the bar or the duty free, either.

_H: Where the hell are you?_

_M: I’m at the gate. Where are you?_

_H: In the lounge. Why would I wait at the gate with all of those screaming children?_

Mike shook his head and hustled back to the private club…where he found his boyfriend handing a business card to some dude decked out in a cashmere sweater, all smiles. Harvey was king of the elevator pitch when it came to getting new business, but the blond guessed the other guy had approached him.

“Let’s get in touch once we’re back in New York and you’ve gotten over your jet lag, Adam. Just call my assistant and she’ll schedule an appointment at your convenience.”

“Of course, Harvey. I need to go board my flight; it was good to finally meet you.”

“Likewise,” Harvey smiled, slotting his sunglasses back as the man walked past Mike. “There you are. What took you so long?”

“Security.”

“Didn’t I tell you to shell out the cash for an express pass?”

“Yeah, which is ridiculous because I’m not a partner: I don’t get to travel for business,” Mike explained, falling back into the amazingly comfortable armchair beside Harvey’s. “Hey, there’s something I want to ask you.”

“You don’t need permission to ask a question, Mike,” the brunet replied as he got out his phone and called Donna.

“Can we…y’know…” Mike paused, dropping his voice to a whisper, “join the mile high club on the way back?”

“What?” Harvey exclaimed before waving a hand in Mike’s face. “Hey Donna, I just…how could you possibly know about that…Jesus, you keep track of that many people’s trips…how big is your secretary information network, anyway?”

Mike figured he’d just been pocket vetoed, so he got up to grab some orange juice from the complimentary bar. When he returned, Harvey was still on the phone, but also typing out an email on his tablet.

Mike was really hoping they’d get at least this one last day to be a couple and not immediately resume drowning themselves in work.

“Donna says you should check your phone. Wendy just sent you a picture.”

Mike opened his inbox, and sure enough there was a message from his boss’ assistant. It was just the smiley emoticon that stuck its tongue out, but when Mike clicked on the attachment he got a nasty surprise: it was a shot of his desk, though it was buried beneath a mountain of deposition tapes, discovery boxes, unedited briefs (hopefully not all of them were Kyle’s), and several corporate bylaws.

“Aww, it looks like Jessica misses you.”

“Ugh.”

“Quit whining. You know how many lawyers are out there looking for work,” Harvey scolded. “Besides, this is you we’re talking about. All of that shouldn’t be more than one, two all-nighters, tops.”

“Ugggggh…hey, you never answered my question.”

“Hmm? Oh look at that, it’s time for us to board. You wouldn’t want to be late and have an even bigger backlog to complete, would you?”

“Ugggggggggggh,” Mike moaned pathetically, peeling himself off of the armchair and dragging the strap of his messenger bag back over his head. He continued to mope through boarding and seating, refusing to cheer up even after the fulsome flight attendant agreed to give him a pair of his own personal Alka Seltzer tablets.

Once they were over Nebraska and most of the other passengers were asleep or fully enthralled by the in-flight movie (some Michael Bay flick, judging by the explosions), Harvey tapped Mike on the bicep.

“What?”

“Shhhh,” the older man ordered, unbuckling Mike from his seat. “Meet me in the lavatory in half a minute.”

“Are we really gonna-”

“Not if you don’t keep quiet.”

Mike watched Harvey plod off to the first-class bathroom, his dick stirring uncomfortably in his pants; it took all his effort not to jump up and sprint to join him. The blond composed himself as best he could before tiptoeing towards the door between business class and coach. As soon as he’d made it inside the same cramped space, though, Harvey had him up against the wall, unbuttoning his fly in a single swipe.

…

Best. Vacation.

EVER!


	11. The Case of the Missing Blond

Harvey woke with an exaggerated yawn, careful to raise his arms up so as to not bang them into the blond’s head (he’d only done it twice…not too bad). He pulled them back underneath the covers as soon as he was finished; winter had started in earnest that week, even if it hadn’t resulted in any snowfall thus far.

There was an upside to the dip in temperatures, however: it made morning sex even more satisfying.

Harvey fanned his arms out, reaching for the blond’s muscular butt. He reached and he reached and ultimately, nothing. The older man turned to his side only to find cold, empty sheets and a Post-it note on the pillow. Narrowing his eyes, Harvey snatched the thing up and scanned it for a good reason why the blond wasn’t still in bed.

_Gotta finish up something at the office. Be back later. –M._

Enraged, the brunet crumpled the thing up and hurled it straight into the trashcan.

Mike hadn’t been around much in the past week, but Harvey hadn’t minded at first. They were lawyers; more to the point, Mike was an associate, which meant that he was Jessica’s slave. But if she thought she wouldn’t get an earful for giving the blond so much work that it interrupted Saturday morning sex, she had another thing coming.

He’d finished dialing the woman’s number by the time he made it into the bathroom.

“Jessica, we need to have a talk.”

_“Harvey, there’d better be a damned good reason you’re calling me at 7:30 on a Saturday. And when I say damned good, I’m talking Daniel-Hardman-fled-the-country-before-his-trial-could-start good.”_

“No, I’m talking about the fact that Mike is at the office doing God-knows-what for you at 7:30 on a Saturday good. Which is not good, in case you missed my tone,” Harvey growled as pushed aside the blond’s Old Spice, reaching for his own saffron-infused deodorant.

“ _Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn_ ,” the managing partner replied, chuckling. (A black woman quoting _Gone with the Wind_?!) “ _Mike finished everything I needed from him by two-thirty in the afternoon yesterday. If you want to be angry with anyone, maybe you should try Louis._ ”

“Oh,” the senior partner answered dumbly as he worked on twisting open his hundred-dollar tub of deluxe German hair gel.

_“Sleep is one thing I can’t buy, Harvey. Remember that the next time you decide to give me a ring before you’ve had your morning coffee.”_

“I didn’t-”

She hung up on him.

\-----

“Mike.”

“Hey, Harvey,” the slightly flustered-looking associate answered as the older man blocked his way back to the bullpen. “Look, I’ve got-”

“I just downloaded the newest Rifftrax to my laptop. Don’t tell me you don’t want to watch it with me over dinner.”

“Damn,” the blond replied, as though he were weighing his options. “I’ve got something I need to finish up tonight. You know how Jessica likes to have a ton of client meetings on Tuesdays.”

“Wednesday is bad enough as it is without piling on a bunch of bullshit small talk. Best to get over the hump with solo work,” the brunet nodded, recalling his own time as an associate. “Fine, we’ll put it off until tomorrow night-”

“Uhhh, I don’t think that’s going to work either,” Mike rejected him, rubbing the back of his head with the hand that wasn’t supporting a tower of documents. “I just got flooded this week. Look, don’t wait up for me for dinner, alright?”

“Fine,” Harvey forced out naturally, doing his best to hide his disappointment. “I guess I’d better let you get to it.”

“Yeah.”

Harvey took the blond’s arm as he started down the hallway again, pulling him into an inconspicuous kiss.

“Don’t keep me waiting forever.”

“You got it, chief,” Mike grinned as he performed a ridiculous salute.

\-----

“Donna, what’s Louis’ number?”

_“Harvey, what the hell is going on? You never call Louis.”_

“I think he’s been dumping work on Mike. Why else would my…he be at the office on a Saturday, if not for Jessica?”

_“His number is in your phone already.”_

“It is? I checked under ‘L’ and couldn’t find it,” Harvey explained as he downed another third of the contents of his coffee mug.

_“First of all, I want you to know I’m really proud of you for trying to figure things out on your own for once. My little senior partner is growing up so fast.”_

“If I’m little, wouldn’t that make you older than me?”

“ _Silence, peon_!” Donna swore from the other end. “ _See that place where it organizes numbers you don’t want clogging up the main list? I stuck Louis’ number in the category ‘People I Would Never Call’_.”

“I didn’t know about that-”

“ _And now that you’re going to call him, you can move him over to your friends list_ ,” his assistant suggested snarkily.

“Do you want a Christmas bonus or not?”

_“Shutting up now. Have a great weekend, boss.”_

Harvey shook his head and pressed the junior partner’s number while he set his mug down in the sink. It took a few rings, so he was already putting on his new hand-made Italian boots by the door when he got an answer.

_“Harvey?! Wait, wait, I don’t know the protocol…is this how we start doing favors for each other? D-Does this mean we’re…buddies now?”_

“No, Louis.”

_“But, but I thought this was- I mean, you never called me before.”_

“Louis, we need to have a word about how much work you’ve been pawning off on Mike.”

_“Huh? Harvey, I haven’t given him anything beyond a couple of briefs since I got my clients back from Jessica’s suspension. I’m still finishing up negotiations for those damned pro bonos.”_

“What?”

_“If he’s doing work for one of the partners, it’s not me. I could look into it for you-”_

“Never mind, Louis,” Harvey cut in, hanging up the second he was done speaking. He made sure to block the number, too – the last thing he wanted was the balding man trying to reach him at an inopportune time.

Besides, Donna’s official job was taking his calls, right?

\-----

“So, you’re free tonight, right?” Harvey inquired as he leaned over the chair in the file room where Mike was sitting.

“I shou’ be ‘wee tomowwah, but I ‘ink I’m gonna get home la’ ‘onight,” Mike informed through the highlighter cap caught between his teeth. “Showwy.”

“What are you working on anyway?”

“The stuff I’m always working on, Harvey,” the blond answered a tad irritably as he dropped the cap onto the wrapper from his sandwich.

“Mike, I haven’t seen you at home since Sunday. I just want to spend some time with my boyfriend,” the older man soothed as rubbed his boyfriend’s back.

“I’ll try my best to finish it up tonight,” Mike promised, the anger washing out of his face with a wide smile.

“You’d better. There’ll be that Rifftrax and a bowl of popcorn waiting for you when you do.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for anything that wasn’t paramount.”

\-----

If it wasn’t Jessica and it wasn’t Louis, then in whose work was Mike drowning at the office on a Saturday?

Shit, maybe it wasn’t work.

Harvey cringed as he felt something burn in the pit of his stomach. Mike wouldn’t cheat on him, would he? As far as Harvey knew, everything was fine. Sex was amazing, at least as far as the older man was concerned…though maybe he wasn’t meeting Mike’s needs. Was he not rimming the blond enough? He tried to engage in the younger man’s kinks on a regular basis, so it wasn’t that…

“This the place?” the cab driver asked.

“Huh? Yeah, thanks,” Harvey nodded as he swiped his black card.

“Y’know, I get why I’m working on the weekend, but a guy like you? Is it really worth it?”

“That’s what I came to find out myself,” the brunet noted, punching in a seven-dollar tip for the guy. “Stay warm out here.”

“You, too.”

Who would Mike even have an affair with, though? So far as he knew, Mike was pretty firmly on the gay side of the spectrum, and he thought of that paralegal as a friend. So who then?- Richard? The burly UPS deliveryman?

Wait, there was one person: that Ben guy.

He’d probably been buttering up Mike with gossip about the latest ultrafast processing doohickey or by bragging about his top score in Smash Bros.

When the elevator reached the floor with all the firm’s servers, Harvey broke into a sprint, nearly crashing into a cart piled high with malfunctioning laptops. He searched the offices but couldn’t find a trace of sentience, natural or artificial. The thought of trashing Mr. IT’s office passed through his mind, but Harvey ultimately rejected it, as it would only delay his prospects of finding Mike.

\-----

Mike was bopping his head along to the techno track on his phone, so he didn’t hear Harvey enter his quiet room at the back of the library. In fact he didn’t hear anything – one second he was knitting one and pearling two, and the next Harvey’s upside-down head was hanging down in his eyeline.

“HOLY SHIT!”

“This is what you’ve been doing all this time?!”

“Huh?” Mike asked, pulling the earbuds out as he rose from his seat.

“I thought you were…” Harvey paused, out of breath with a cold sweat running down his normally spotless forehead. “Christ, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to make fun of me.”

“Because you’ve decided to take after Betsy Ross?”

“Hey, I’m knitting, not stitching!” Mike replied before he could double-check the statement with his brain. Harvey burst into laughter, having to prop himself up on his knees. “Shut up. This is exactly why I hid this from you.”

“You’re making us a blanket?”

“It’s for Grammy – for Christmas. She said she wanted a new one, but they don’t let patients have knitting needles at the care facility.”

“Oh.”

“‘Oh’?”

“You could’ve done this at home, y’know.”

“Like you would’ve let me. You probably would have been cracking jokes the whole time.”

“Listen up, Mike,” Harvey ordered as he recollected himself. “I will make fun of you for a lot of things, but not for loving your grandmother.”

“You mean it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s…I…wait, what did you think I was doing?”

“That’s not…”

“Seriously, tell me.”

“I was wrong – it doesn’t matter.”

“I’ve never seen you so freaked out. I mean, you’d have to think some really awful was going on-” Mike halted, studying the older man more closely. “Holy shit…did you think I was screwing someone else?”

“…No.”

“You totally did.”

“You were the one keeping a secret.”

“Who would I even have an affair with here?”

“Well, there’s that Ben guy.”

“Ben?!” Mike exclaimed, convulsing at the thought of Harvey worrying about something so absurd. “Harvey…dude…”

“Don’t call me dude.”

“You’re number one, dude,” Mike swore, completely honestly. “I just felt…well, since knitting is girly.”

“What’s girly about knitting, Mike? Think about it: would you ever catch Jessica knitting? Donna? Wendy? Hell, I bet even your little paralegal friend doesn’t know how to knit, even if she’s been wearing sweaters since it got cold.”

“That’s a good point. I didn’t even think about it-”

“Of course you didn’t,” Harvey mocked, patting him on the head. “Now will you come home already? We’ve still got pretty much the whole weekend; that’s plenty of time to squeeze in knitting alongside movie-riffing and sex. Not to mention decorating the tree.”

“Well, since you put it like that…you promise not to make fun of me for knitting?”

“Nope. But I won’t call you girly and I won’t mock you for being Edith’s little angel – deal?”

“That’s the best I’m going to get, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much.”

“Fine. There’s one thing I can’t get over, though.”

“What?”

“I can’t believe you came to the office in anything other than a suit,” Mike confessed, admiring the cut of Harvey’s khakis.

“Mike, _no one_ is here. Not even the weekend janitor is in today. Hell, even _Louis_ didn’t bother to come to the office today.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I checked all of the partners’ offices while I searched for you. And you, I might add, came to work in skinny jeans.”

“That’s not…wait, so no one else is here?” Mike asked, considering their options.

“The point of me coming here wasn’t to screw you in my office, Mike; it was to get you home so that I could screw in our bed. Y’know, like we could’ve done half an hour ago if you hadn’t squirreled yourself away in here.”

“You sure about that? I know you want to bend me over your desk,” Mike suggested, wiggling his eyebrows.

“You don’t deserve that – after all, you tried to keep a secret from me, and not even a job-related one,” Harvey upbraided. “If you keep stalling and don’t get ready to leave in the next minute, I won’t even give you a spanking today.”

“I’m moving, I’m moving,” Mike shouted, throwing the mostly completed blanket, spools of yarn, and other assorted odds and ends back into the plastic bag from the crafting store where he’d bought them. “Sorry about-”

“Focus on walking. Those jeans are giving me ideas; if we don’t hurry, I might just have to drag you back to the condo. ”

“Hey, I’m the one with thighs of steel, stud.”

“That’s why I’m in a rush, babe.”

\-----

They spent that afternoon plopped down on the couch in their t-shirts and underwear watching _Assault of the Space Mummies_ , snacking on popcorn and beer and joking along while Mike finished his blanket. And that's all Harvey really wanted, anyway.


	12. The Burrito Connection

“Well, that was…”

“Disheartening,” Marcus nodded as he held the door of the small theatre open for Wendy. “Maybe next time we can skip out on the documentary and go for something sci-fi.”

“Sorry. I just figured that you might be at risk of culture shock now that you’re not going to be back in Africa for the foreseeable future,” she justified as she readjusted her scarf. “Then again, I guess I had it coming; who’s ever heard of a completely upbeat documentary?”

“No worries. Hey, I know a place around here that makes a great burrito…at least, it was here a few years ago. Are you alright to brave the cold?”

“I’m not as sickly as you, Mr. I’ve-Had-Malaria-Four-Times,” Wendy mocked, her lips twisting into an amused smile. “Did the nurse just roll her eyes at you after the first go-around?”

“Hey, I told you that for sympathy, not so you could judge me. Anyway, how are things at the office?- is my bro causing any headaches?”

“Even Harvey isn’t crazy enough to piss off Jessica just before her trips back to Philly and then to Lake Como.”

“Clearly you don’t know him well enough.”

“Jessica threatened to send Mike to a client’s headquarters in Gary, Indiana if he tried anything, and I emailed Harvey the Yelp reviews of hotels in the city. The first one had a traumatic recounting of being mugged in the parking lot.”

“That’s brilliant…and nightmarishly cruel.”

“I get results – that’s why I’m Jessica’s assistant.”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Marcus teased as they paused for the traffic light to change. “Remember what you were like after your first day for her?”

“I was filing until two in the morning because that idiot didn’t know his ABCs,” the woman beside him sighed nostalgically. “Yola thought I’d been murdered, and Phil made me sit down and eat a full dinner when I got home because I was so ragged.”

“You stuck it out, though.”

“That’s because it beats working the till. Oh, and dealing with the mess of you and your older brother trying to be baristas.”

“Hey, don’t pin my bro’s wretched expressos on me. Besides, you know you’d love having me around the office.”

“Psh, you need to check yourself, white boy. One Specter is enough for the firm, and you’re supposed to be my oasis from work.”

“That’s all I am to you? After all these years?”

“I’ll consider reevaluating the situation…after I’ve tasted this oh-so-good burrito, that is.”

“Challenge accepted,” Marcus grinned as they walked past the holiday displays in the store windows. “It’s this one up here – the one with Speedy Gonzales on the sign.”

“I’m already worried. This isn’t going to give me diarrhea, is it?”

“Trust me,” the blond Specter assured as he opened the door for his nervous companion, only to gawk as he caught sight of both his brother’s assistant and boyfriend sitting at one of the tables in the small eating area. “Donna? Mike? What are you two doing here?”

“Enjoying the best damn burritos in the city,” the redhead answered without looking up from her phone.

“But why are the two of you together? Is this some kind of last-minute planning session for gifts for Harvey?” Marcus pressed.

“First of all, you know that’s not the reason. Secondly, unlike some people, Mike and I don’t leave those kinds of things for the last minute,” Donna sniped, causing the blond seated across from her to choke with laughter as he attempted to swallow. “Besides, what other meal would suffice after an intense yoga session.”

“She got you to go back?” Wendy asked, astonished.

“It’s not so bad,” Mike answered sheepishly after downing a swig of his water. “Besides, it’s a good excuse to get out of going to another client’s Christmas party with Jessica…not that I don’t like Jessica,” the blond defended as his boss’ assistant narrowed her eyes at him.

“They’re surprisingly dreadful,” Donna nodded in agreement. “Who knew rich people served such rubbish hors d’oeuvres? And the droll conversations, too. I let Harvey know in no uncertain terms that I’d quit if I had to attend another one of those things with him after the first two.”

“Wait, does that mean Jessica Pearson had to go stag?” Marcus wondered aloud.

“No, she bought off Keith with the promise of an extra week’s vacation…that poor, poor bastard,” the redhead clucked.

“Shouldn’t Rachel be with you guys?”

“She said she was going to grab takeout from some French Algerian place near her apartment,” Mike explained to Wendy. “She thinks this place is too low-brow for her.”

“She’s lucky she’s my friend, because honestly, forget that noise,” Donna observed, taking a sip of her tea. “Nobody gets to diss my favorite burritos. Especially if they’ve never even tried them.”

“‘Your’ burritos? I’m the one who told you about them in the first place!” Marcus corrected.

“And for that I’m eternally grateful. Oh, and if you recall, I did need you for something, Little Specter,” the redhead remembered, retrieving a legal document from her bag. “You’re one-half inheritor, after all.”

“Is this that mystery gift you were talking about getting Harvey?”

“Well, it’s only for him in part,” the younger Specter replied vaguely, quickly signing his name on one of the blank lines. “Were you able to get everything back without the old man noticing, Mike?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but I think he was too busy trying to figure out what I was doing when I was knitting to notice. He’s been to a ton of clients’ parties, too, so that should help.”

“Eleven in all,” Donna noted. “He was invited to thirty-seven, but I was to come up with excuses to get him out of the other twenty-six. How about you, Wendy?”

“I saved Jessica from thirty-eight of fifty-three, though I had to reuse some prior engagements: she’s been to the dentist’s office for emergency late-night root canals eleven times in the past two weeks,” Wendy grinned broadly.

“Oh, the things we do for our bosses.”

“Amen, sister. The only one who has it easy is Norma, since Louis always gets to use the Chanukah excuse.”

“Well, I’ve gotta run,” Donna informed as she stood and shrugged on her coat. “I need to pack tonight because I’ll be closing out Harvey’s files from this year all of tomorrow.”

“Wait, I’ve got one more thing I need to ask: how did you know we’d come here?” Marcus pleaded.

“I caught Wendy looking at review for a documentary about Gabonese biology students working to fight poaching, and we share a profound appreciation for Mex-American cuisine,” the redhead reasoned, reaching for her bag. “Besides, I’m Donna. QED.”

“How does my bro deal with that much computing power in one woman?” Marcus asked the other two once the woman in question had left the restaurant.

“The world’s a riddle, yadda, yadda, yadda. Can we order already?” Wendy asked, setting her gloves down on the table.

“I need to grab another one to go for Harvey,” Mike chimed in, leaving the blond Specter to ponder life’s mysteries alone by the window.

\-----

Harvey stifled a yawn as he strode out of the gala hall and toward the museum’s main exit. He’d let Harold go home a half hour earlier, and it was only his appreciation for his client’s taking a chance on him back when he was a rookie that made him stay any longer himself. Maybe if he’d brought Mike with him instead it wouldn’t have been so dull.

Then again, Jessica would’ve never forgiven him if he’d been caught screwing her associate in the coat-check room at a client engagement.

“Think fast!”

“Wha-“

Harvey just managed to catch the brown paper bag tossed in his direction, looking up to find his boyfriend waiting at the top of the steps.

“Mike?!”

“I thought you’d be hungry.”

“Starving, but what is this?”

“Burrito. Donna said you liked them.”

“You walked halfway across town just to bring me dinner?”

“Yeah. And maybe we can walk home together…?”

Harvey closed the gap between them and planted a kiss on the blond’s lips, pulling back eventually to check what the other man was wearing.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“I thought you said we weren’t going to keep anything from each other that wasn’t work related.”

“It’s just…I was kind of hoping I’d get to see you in tights.”

Mike blushed, ducking his head to adjust his beanie. “I got kinda sweaty, so I showered and changed back into my suit.”

“Damn,” Harvey lamented dramatically, slipping his hand into Mike’s as they started toward the sidewalk. “Did you have a good girls’ yoga night?”

“Laugh all you want,” the blond mocked. “Donna and I ran into your brother and a certain assistant afterward. You never told me how into Christmas you were.”

“Oh, God.”

“That’s right, stud. Marcus promised to bring out all the holiday photos of you in your geekiest period when we go over to his place for the big day. Apparently you sculpted your own Captain Kirk ornam-”

Harvey shut up his cheeky boyfriend with another full-on kiss. It was his only option, really.

“It’s bad enough we have to celebrate in Brooklyn-”

“Hey, I’m not going to drag Grammy and her friends all the way out to the condo and back on Christmas-”

“-without Marcus trying to humiliate me. You know he’s making Yolanda and me cook everything?”

“Not everything. Grammy and I are baking cookies, Mildred is making her famous pumpkin and ginger cheesecake, and Rebecca is in charge of two whole trays of brownies. Two,” Mike repeated, holding up as many fingers.

“Well, I guess there’s a silver lining to everything.”

“More like a stainless steel lining. Admit it: you’re ecstatic. You’re counting down the hours and minutes until we get to party, and not a boring client party, either.”

“Party like we’re in the company of three…no, there’ll be June, too…four women who are over seventy years old?”

“Grammy’s a better dancer than you,” Mike taunted, wagging his tongue for added effect. “And she’ll kick your butt in Smash Bros.”

“Nobody beats the combination of Princess Peach and me, babe.”

“We’ll see,” the blond warned ominously, throwing their linked arms up as they marched home together, unperturbed by the December chill.


	13. "Working" from Home

“Ugh,” Harvey groaned as finished wiping down the seat of the weight machine he’d used. “I can’t wait until I can get back over to Nick’s and do some boxing. Mike?”

“Is it time to leave?”

“Unless you want to be late for work on Jessica’s first day back,” Harvey warned as he crossed over to the aerobic section of the small seventh floor gym. “Is that machine right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Jesus, Mike. It says you burned nine hundred calories in the past hour. Just how fast were you cycling, anyway?”

“Ah, this is nothing,” Mike began as he took the spray bottle of disinfectant from the brunet. “When I was a bike messenger…during tax season…I had to rush things over at light speed from seven until two in the morning. One time, I got back, peeled off my shirt, and left it on the floor, and when I got up the next morning it was stuck to the wood so bad it stripped the varnish when I yanked-”

“Enough.”

“I think you’re turning green, stud.”

“Because you’re disgusting, and I haven’t even had breakfast yet. C’mon, we both desperately need a shower – pronto.”

“Oh, I almost forgot: can I catch a ride with you and Ray?”

“You didn’t take that as a given?” Harvey inquired as he held open the glass door to the hallway. “Were you actually thinking of riding your bike to work today?”

“I mean, I could…”

“I have enough nightmares of a distracted driver hitting you on a dry, sunny day. I don’t need the extra worry of you skidding over black ice and into the path of an eighteen-wheeler.”

“You’ve got some vivid nightmares, dude. You don’t have anything better to think about when you’re asleep?”

“I don’t just have nightmares, Mike. In fact, there have been a few nice dreams as of late.”

“Really? Like what?”

“Well,” Harvey smirked as he pushed the blond into the open elevator. “There was one starring you and me in Central Park after dark.”

“You know that’s illegal, right?”

“The time and place were the least illicit aspects of what we were doing, babe.”

“…”

“Cat got your tongue?” Harvey grinned, grinding his basketball shorts against Mike’s nylon cycling tights.

“How much time do we have to shower?”

“Only about ten minutes.”

“I can be quick.”

“I know you can.”

“Hey, that was a one-time thing!”

“Are you sure about that?” the brunet prodded, leaning in to blow on the younger man’s earlobe for a moment before pulling back. “Then again, I’d better not. You’ll already be tired from your workout and I’m sure it’ll be a long day.”

“Dude, that’s what the coffee and Red Bull are for. Besides, it’ll be even longer if we don’t help each other out.”

“Good point,” Harvey conceded as the lift reached the top floor. “Here’s the key. Hurry up and get the water right while I check my phone for any messages.”

Mike saluted his approval and _sprinted_ down the hallway to their door. It was an impressive feat, especially given the way his shorts strained against the massive erection he was packing.

When Harvey got inside, the first thing he noticed was his phone vibrating atop the kitchen island.

“It’s about damn time. I’ve only tried to reach you four times this morning.”

“Jessica, I’m going to see you in thirty minutes-”

“You didn’t read the email I sent out, did you? The building’s furnace went amuck over the weekend; it’s a Finnish sauna in here.”

“Crap. How’s the office-”

“It’s fine. Benjamin spared the servers, and Isabelle was smart enough to grab some dehumidifiers from the basement and hook them up to run automatically, so no documents in the file room should be damaged. She also set up two of them and a few fans in your office to save your records.”

“Fuck, I hadn’t even thought about that,” Harvey cursed as he kicked off his shoes and padded towards the bathroom.

“You can give her a present on Wednesday night. I’m only staying here long enough to finish the paperwork for their raises, and then I’m going home. The maintenance crew say the repairs will take all day, so today’s work from home.”

“Psh, I could handle the heat.”

“Harvey, while I appreciate your dedication, I run a firm full of corporate lawyers well acquainted with work safety codes.”

“Is that all?”

“No. I actually called because I found you a new client while I was in Italy. He recruits and manages players for the MLB from the Dominican Republic.”

“You didn’t want him for yourself?”

“I found a new client for each of the partners, even Louis. Consider it an extra Christmas present from me.”

Harvey zoned out when he peeked around the corner and caught sight of Mike lying on the tile floor with his legs up in the air. He’d coated his butt in shaving cream and was reaching for his razor.

“The heat must be going to my head, because I didn’t hear a ‘thank you, Jessica’ anywhere in there.”

“Thank you, Jessica,” he quickly recited after pulling back into the living room.

“That’s more like it. I’ll have Wendy send all the relevant information to your digital dropbox so you can prepare yourself for tomorrow’s meeting.”

“See you tomorrow, boss.”

“Bye, Harvey. Oh, and do try to focus on work, would you?”

The brunet rolled his eyes and returned his attention to glimpsing the spectacle in the next room. For his part, Mike was completely focused on the strokes of the blade. With each one, more of the younger man’s bum revealed itself. It was enough to drive a man insane with lust.

So of course that’s when Harvey’s phone decided to start vibrating again.

“Hey, Harvey.”

“D-Donna?”

“Is something wrong, boss?”

“No, no everything is fine,” the brunet winced as he struggled to ignore his own erection.

“Good. I’m just calling to let you know that I’ll be over in an hour. Oh, and I’ll bring burritos, so don’t worry about making breakfast.”

“Donna, ‘work from home’ generally means one’s own home.”

“Oh, so I trust you’ll be able to set up the conference call with your ten o’clock clients all by yourself?”

“Are you sure you’re not just coming here to enjoy my fireplace?”

“Would I be that obvious?” the man’s assistant feigned over the sound of hangers dragged along a closet bar.

“So I should keep it off?”

“You know what, maybe I won’t bring any burritos with me.”

“How about I make waffles instead? After all, I’m supposed to be hospitable to my guests, especially the ones sent by Jessica.”

“I wasn’t sent by-”

“Donna, we can read each other’s lies. She thinks Mike and I would spend the whole day boning if someone wasn’t here to manage us, doesn’t she?”

“…Those weren’t her exact words…but yes.”

“An hour, and not a moment before.”

“Will I get to see what I think I’ll get to see if I’m early?”

Unable to dignify such a prurient question with a response (he was a gentleman, after all), Harvey clicked the conversation to a close.

“What’s up?” Mike asked as he poked his head out from the bathroom.

“The office is closed.”

“What?! We get a snow day!?!”

“No, but we’ll be working here.”

“That’s still pretty sweet,” Mike smirked as he rinsed off his razor. “I get to edit briefs in my briefs – hot damn!”

“There won’t be any of that either. Jessica ordered Donna over here, so we’ll need to get dressed…did you finish shaving your butt already?”

“…How much did you see?” Mike eked out, his face starting to blush.

“Enough to know you still need a shower, twinky. Now get the water going like I told you – I still have one phone call I need to make.”

“It’s nothing but orders with you today.”

“You’re getting shower sex, so quit complaining,” Harvey silenced with a pair of light spanks as he pressed another number on his speed dial. Mike stuck his tongue out and started adjusting the dial on the wall.

“Good morning, Mr. Specter.”

“Harold, I told you that unless we’re with a new client you could just call me ‘Harvey’ from now on.”

“Sorry, Mis…Harvey. I’m working on that motion you wanted for tomorrow-”

“If it’s not too much trouble, why don’t you come over to my place? Donna’s going to be here, too, so it should save us from any communication headaches.”

“Really?! I guess even the building’s furnace can’t keep Team Harvey apart, huh?”

“…”

“Is something wrong, Mi-Harvey?”

“Harold, never use the phrase ‘Team Harvey’ again. Ever.”

\-----

Donna briefly considered letting herself into Harvey’s – no, Harvey and Mike’s condo, but ruled it out. She knew all too well how grumpy the old man could be before he’d caffeinated himself…though that character flaw had abated somewhat since Mike’s appearance in their lives.

He’d still have to pay for the next lunch out with her and Rachel, though.

“Hey, Donna,” Mike welcomed a couple beats after she’d knocked. “I’m about to start making the waffles. Do you want regular mix or whole wheat?”

“Well, I’m already eating something unhealthy, so why go for a half measure? Put me down for regular.”

“You got it,” he nodded as he hurried back to the machine.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Do you remember the password I made for my company dropbox?” her boss offered rather suddenly. He had his head buried in the refrigerator and his arms setting jars of jam onto the counter, like some kind of alien cephalopod.

“Hmm. When did you last change it?”

“Sometime in the spring…I think.”

“Ahhh, now I remember. You used the name of the third-string shortstop for the Yankees – ‘Estevez’, wasn’t it?”

“Donna, you’re a genius.”

“Quit praising me and bring me my waffle, manservants,” she chided them, taking a seat at the dining table. “Y’know, I’m a little surprised this place is so clean. Wasn’t Uli last here way back at the start of December?”

“Are you calling me messy?” Harvey replied irritably as he checked the coffee maker.

“No, but I mean, well…Mike lives here now.”

“Hey! I’m nice to you, jerk!”

“And I’m honest with you, panda boy. There’s a reason why I never set foot in your apartment.”

“If you must know, we did a little tidying up the other day,” the brunet admitted as he returned to the fridge for creamer.

“He found three pine needles and made us spend the entire afternoon cleaning.”

“Tidying up,” Harvey insisted. “First of all, two hours isn’t the whole afternoon. Secondly, it wasn’t a proper deep cleaning like this place needs.”

“You made me mop the floor!”

“One floor, specifically the smaller guest bathroom. And you didn’t even scrub the grout white.”

“Who cares if the grout is white or off-white? Besides, I know how to keep stuff clean: I swept the floor of my apartment twice a month.”

(Donna sat back and admired the two men bickering beside one another in the kitchen, imagining them doing the same thing when Harvey was ninety.)

“I bet you just swept the dirt back out into the hallway.”

“…Shut up. I’m making you a waffle, so be grateful.”

Harvey didn’t respond verbally, but he planted a quick kiss on Mike’s cheek as he walked over to the table with a pair of full mugs.

“So, how many phone calls am I going to have with irritated clients?”

“Five excepting the conference call, but I think I can butter up two of them,” Donna informed. “And I’ll try to get a hold of the wives of the other three. Nobody puts an angry man in his place quite like a horrified spouse.”

“Devious. I like it.”

“More importantly, why aren’t you using the mugs I bought you guys?”

“I would if it were just the three of us, but Harold should be arriving shortly, and I don’t want my associate to know me as the ‘Cuddle Champ’,” Harvey groaned.

“What?! Harvey, you really invited Harold over here to join us?”

“Surprisingly, he’s becoming a pretty good mentor,” Mike grinned as he set the timer for the next battered confection.

“I don’t know which part of that sentence I’m hurt by more: ‘surprisingly’ or ‘pretty good’,” Harvey grumbled. Donna offered him a consolatory pat on the back of his hand. “Why doesn’t anyone have any faith in me when it comes to my associate?”

“You’re bad at teaching, and he’s bad at cleaning,” the redhead summarized as she reached for her coffee. “But that’s fine, because I’m perfect at everything.”

“Except being humble,” Harvey mumbled.

“Humility is for mortals. Pass the creamer.”

Donna was slightly afraid her boss might empty the carton over her head, but the doorbell interrupted his plans. Harvey delivered a warning glare before getting up from the table to welcome the next guest.

“Uli?”

“ _Guten Morgen_ , Harvey!” the maid replied, pulling him into a tight hug. “Is it alright if I clean today?”

“Uhh, sure,” Harvey answered, uncharacteristically bemusedly, as he stepped out of the doorway. “You weren’t scheduled to come until tomorrow, though.”

“My other clients cancelled because of the ice and snow. But I know how anxious you get about a dirty home,” she explained, delivering another rib-crushing hug to Mike. “And besides, you’ve got a fireplace and the Bundesliga channel on your television. As the Dutch would say, _gezellig_!”

“I don’t get a hello, Uli?” Donna pouted.

“Come here, my fiery darling,” the burly woman commanded. “You’re like Eierschecke – sweet and soothing, but with a strong bite.”

“You’re the best, Uli.”

“If I had said something like that, you would have slapped me,” Harvey observed.

“Yes, but you would have meant it in a different way. And you’re my boss, so it would be a little weird.”

“Wait, don't shut the door, M-Harvey.”

"Harold?"

"Hey, boss. I'm sorry I'm a little late."

“Don't worry about that. And you didn’t have to wear a suit to come over here,” Harvey informed as everyone turned back to see his associate in the hallway.

“Oh, well you always say the suit makes the man…”

“That does sound like him,” Mike laughed from the other end of the kitchen. “Harold, you want a waffle?”

“…Is that alright, boss?”

“Yes, Harold,” Harvey groaned again, pointing the man toward the shoe rack. “Does everyone think I’m so cruel that I’d have you work here without even offering you something to eat?”

“Maybe.”

“ _Vielleicht_.”

“No, you’re not quite as bad as Louis,” Mike joked, earning himself a swat to the back of the head. “Dude, that was a compliment!”

“Don’t call me dude.”

\-----

Mike stifled a yawn and checked the clock: half past one. After Harvey had Uli instruct him on how to scrub grout properly, he’d commandeered the guest bedroom to serve as his office while he researched a couple of loopholes for Jessica.

Still, there wasn’t all that much he could do digitally, and his boss was too busy pressing the head subcontractor that had recertified the furnace for compensation to send him anything else.

“You up for some lunch?” Donna suggested from the doorway. “Uli’s team won, so she’s celebrating by making hot cider and some kind of torte.”

“Ooh, that sounds good. You’re already finished up, too?”

“You doubt my skills?” Donna reproached. “I finished rescheduling everything a little while ago and even ordered a sweater and some books for Isabelle’s daughter for Harvey to give to her. Rachel and I have been trolling shoe deals for the past twenty minutes.”

“The big guy has no idea how lucky he is to have you.”

“Oh, he knows. I’m due for a visit to Louis Vuitton before the trees start to blossom.”

“I think my wallet just cringed out of sympathy for Harvey's.”

“Speaking of whom, if we hurry we just might catch the end of his conversation with a real pain-in-the-ass client. I’m secretly hoping he dumps us for someone else,” Donna whispered as they trod out into the living.

“Yes, Matt, I do understand what you’re going through,” Harvey assured as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “But the IRS has been cracking down on that kind of thing for the past few years, so I don’t think they’re going to give up. If you’d just pay the back taxes plus the fine I’m sure-”

A nonstop flurry of expletives denied the brunet the chance to finish his argument. Harold looked like he was about to say something, but his boss waved him off while he held the phone under the table until the noise stopped.

“Look, you’ve heard all I’m going to say on the matter. Having me try to get you out of this will only result in an even larger bill for my services and nothing to show for it. Why don’t you take a day to think things over and call me again tomorrow morning?”

The speaker erupted into profanities for the second time since Mike had arrived. It looked like Donna’s wish might just become a reality.

“Well, at least that’s over,” Harold offered optimistically once their client had hung up. “And everyone else seemed pleased with what we had to tell them.”

“That’s because they weren’t stashing their incomes in front companies, Harold,” Harvey stated irritably. “And then blowing it all on Atlantic City cocktail waitresses, anyway.”

“Time for lunch!” Uli interrupted, opening the door of the oven. As she did, a heavenly scent invaded Mike’s (and everyone else’s) nostrils, temporarily shocking him senseless.

“Jesus, Uli,” Harvey cried, reaching for his stomach. “Why aren’t you running a bakery?”

“Who says I’m not?”

“Alright, executive decision: we’re taking a break, Harold.”

“Thanks, boss,” the curly-haired associate and Donna cheered in unison. “Go Team Harvey!”

“Et tu, Donna?”

“I didn’t like it at first either. But the silliness of it’s kinda grown on me,” the redhead justified as she nabbed cutlery from the drawer. “And you know whatever imitation Louis tries to do with Norma will be comedy gold.”

“You’re not telling Louis about any of this.”

“Sure, boss. Sure.”

“I mean it.”

“Fine,” Donna acquiesced, albeit with her back turned.

“Hey, Harvey,” Harold began, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. All these papers you had me read about this new client – there was a bunch of stuff I didn’t understand. Like RBIs, or ERAs, or anything about baseball, really.”

Mike and Donna locked eyes fearfully and turned to watch a mixture of confusion and embarrassment wash over Harvey’s face.

“This is an emergency,” the senior partner recited in catatonic monotone. “Mike, there should still be a game on the DVR. Hurry and get it started.”

“But we’re about to have lunch-”

“Emergency, Mike! We can eat in the living room,” Harvey overrode him. “Harold, there’s no way I’m letting you, as my associate, go through life without knowing baseball. Forget everything else on your to-do list; this afternoon you’re learning everything about the greatest sport known to man.”

“In America,” Uli corrected, though she’d already begun moving her dish to the coffee table. “But I’ve always wanted to learn about it.”

“She’s a quick study, Harold. Try to keep up with her,” Harvey encouraged.

“Don’t worry, Mike,” Donna assured Mike as her boss launched into an explanation of pitching, “we can mock hideous shoes with Rachel on Skype while those three spend the afternoon ‘researching’ the client’s profession.”

“These shoes had better be really awful.”

“One of the designers refers to herself as a ‘postmodern deconstruction of the psychological superstructure of a medieval village idiot’.”

“Shoes it is,” Mike nodded. “But we should take a group photo while we’re all here.”

“Mike, you’re really catching up in the genius department. God, can you believe we’re getting paid for a day like this?” Donna sighed. “Hey boss, can we all work here again sometime?”

“No.”

“Aww, c’mon,” Mike pleaded, grinning at his boyfriend.

“…Maybe.”

“Three,” Donna started.

“Two,” Mike continued.

“One,” Harold cried from the dining table.

“Go Team Harvey!”

“I hate all of you,” Harvey growled, slicing himself a wedge of torte.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I recast a Rachel line as a Harvey line. Don't sue me.
> 
> More importantly, THIS STORY IS ALL LIES. THERE’S NEVER AN OPEN ELEVATOR WHEN YOU NEED ONE.


	14. High & Low Culture

“Quit fidgeting.”

“I’m not fidgeting,” Mike lied as he adjusted the bow tie of his tux. (He was quite proud of the fact that he’d tied it himself once again, and even more so because it wasn’t obviously lopsided like last time.) “You’re fine in places like this, but I’ve never been to the ballet.”

“And that’s exactly why we’re here,” Rachel reminded. “If you hadn’t tried to be smart in front of Jessica’s client, I’d never have been roped into giving you a lesson.”

“Please, you’re overjoyed at this.”

“I am not. Today was supposed to be laundry day and-”

“And I had to buy both of us tickets to _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_.”

“Was I supposed to pay for my own ticket on top of teaching you the difference between closed fourth and fifth positions?”

“They’re basically the same!”

Rachel shook her head at him and let go of the most pitiable sigh Mike had ever heard.

“If anyone’s to blame, it’s Louis for reenacting scenes in his office. If I didn’t have to see that every time I dropped off a document for him, I never would have tried to impress Kimberly.”

“Don't blame Louis for your problems, Mike,” the paralegal ordered as she opened her clutch. “Oh, and give me your phone.”

“What?!”

“You didn’t really think I’d let you have it when we’re in our seats, did you?”

“But, Harvey’s going to give me updates on his poker game with the guys.”

“And I’m supposed to care why?” Rachel pressed, snapping her fingers.

“Can I get it at intermission?”

“…Fine.”

“And how about some wine before the start?”

“Don’t press your luck. You’re here to learn.”

“I can learn with a buzz.”

“Mike, you have even less tolerance for alcohol than I do. Honestly, you stoners are such lightweights.”

“Correction: ex-stoner.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. C’mon, let’s go before I have to squeeze past people and end up ruining the train of this dress.”

“It does look pretty nice,” Mike commented honestly. Rachel was more put together than just about anyone even on her worst days, and he didn’t even want to think about how long she’d spent getting ready before he'd picked her up from her apartment.

“It’s Donna’s, so if there’s so much as a scuff on it we won’t hear the end of it for weeks.”

“On second thought, why don’t I carry your train for you?” Mike shivered. He could already picture the redhead storming into the associates’ pool, a sabre-sharp scarlet stiletto in each hand.

“Rachel, Mike!” a familiar voice bellowed once they’d presented their tickets to the usher.

“Hello, Louis,” Rachel said graciously. She performed a slight curtsey – as much as the confines of her dress allowed – and waited for the junior partner to pass through the sea of Upper West Siders.

“It’s game time, Mike. Are you ready for your ballet lesson?”

“Just how many people did Jessica tell about what happened on Thursday?”

“Everyone that matters. She used it to open the partners’ meeting, albeit with two enormous pauses for laughter.”

“So what you’re saying is that all the partners think I’m a complete idiot.”

“No, just that you’re an uncultured clodhopper, which is what we thought the moment we saw you,” Louis corrected, taking a sip of champagne to accentuate their social gap. “Oh, and that you’re a complete idiot. I mean come on, bragging in front of a client? That’s like choosing to write an essay about the subject of your professor’s dissertation.”

“Or trying to correct a master delicatessen’s sandwich layering technique while he’s making your lunch.”

“He was getting mayo on my lettuce-” Mike started before catching himself. “Look, I’m getting quizzed on Monday, so can we just take our seats?”

“Five minutes ago you were doing everything you could to stay in the lobby.”

“Do you want me to rip this dress?”

“Fine, we’re taking our seats. See you at the end-”

“Oh, no, I’m sitting over there, too.”

“Really?” Rachel asked nervously. “What row are you?”

“N. I wanted L, for obvious reasons, but the guy at the counter said he couldn’t get anyone to switch. Which did you get?”

“…M,” Mike admitted warily. “You’re not in any chance sitting in the eighth seat, are you?”

“Oh this is going to be great!” Louis cried, overjoyed. “I’ll get to keep watch over you and make sure you don’t make any more faux pas. That’s French for-”

“I know what a faux pas is, Louis.”

~~~~~

“What a beautiful end to act three,” Rachel admired as the curtains descended. “The way Hermia twisted and swung herself between Lysander and Demetrius – it was revolutionary.”

“I know,” Louis bawled as he handed a handkerchief for the paralegal to dab her eyes. “And the way Puck sprung forth without ever tensing his muscles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a pure celebration of joyous youth in my life.”

“The dude playing Oberon has some nice calves.”

Mike was just able to defend himself as Rachel swung her clutch at his head.

“Ow!”

“You haven’t learned a single thing. Ugh, I give up.”

“That’s not true. Like, scene two of the second act, for example. The reason the crowd went wild is that Titania did her whole section switching from first to fifth positions and back without ever transitioning through third.”

“Mike, that’s just the technical stuff. You wouldn’t praise a Monet for the frame it’s in, would you?”

“That depends on the frame.”

“Didn’t Theseus’ ponderous steps instill a sense of awe in you? Or how about Egeus’ stilted cadence?”

“That was a perfect expression of a father who both loves and respects his daughter, but also fears for her well-being after his passing,” Louis recalled, leaning his head back.

“Truly insightful,” Rachel nodded.

“Can I have my phone back now?”

“Fine. But get me a cough drop from the usher on your way out – I don’t want to interrupt the show when it starts up again.”

“Thank you,” Mike whimpered once he had his link to the outside world in hand, reminding himself not to sprint out of the theater. The happy dings of missed texts flooded in once he’d turned it back on.

 

From: H-tastic (212-XXX-XXXX)

Received: 2:13 PM

_Peter actually thinks he’s going to win for once. This is going to be hilarious._

 

Received: 2:51 PM

_How could somebody in the FBI be so terrible at reading poker facers? He was sure I was bluffing when I had pocket kings; he lost half his chips._

 

Received: 3:27 PM

_You are now dating the proud owner of an FBI agent’s old lesbian porno vid. Any interest in watching it with me tonight?_

 

Mike grinned and quickly tapped out a reply.

 

To: H-tastic (212-XXX-XXXX)

Sent: 3:31 PM

_Sorry for not replying - Rachel took my phone. How bad a porno are we talking about?_

 

Mike’s phone started ringing even before the usher could finish fishing a lozenge out of his coat pocket.

“ _It looks pretty damn terrible. The back cover features a woman being…stimulated with a wine bottle._ ”

“Oh god, more lesbian porn made by straight guys who don’t understand the female body. I feel like I’m going to be hiding behind a pillow for most of it.”

“ _You did want us to mix more horror into our Netflix queue_. _There seems to be a scene involving a garden hose, too._ ”

“If I agree to watch it with you, will you order stuffed-crust?”

“ _Deal. How’s the ballet going?_ ” Harvey inquired, an audible chuckle indicating that he, too, thought the whole thing was hilarious.

“I’m not really the biggest fan of Shakespeare, but there are some good-looking guys in tights. You should’ve come with.”

“ _Don’t think so, babe. And y’know, you could sneak out now before the start of the second half._ ”

“Jessica’s going to quiz me tomorrow morning.”

“ _Have you learned not to-_ ”

“Yes, yes. I will no longer try to impress a client with something I don’t fully understand. God, I’m never going to live this down, am I?”

“ _People will forget about it eventually. Put it in perspective: would you rather be a genius who occasionally fails or a complete ditz like Kyle who stuns people when he actually does something right for a change?_ ”

“Truthfully? I think I’d prefer the soft blanket of lowered expectations.”

“ _No boyfriend of mine will ever be let off the hook that easily. Now go back in there and finish your ballet lesson._ ”

“Thanks, stud.”

“ _Anytime, babe._ ”

His patience restored, Mike carefully worked his way through the mass of silk ruffles and mercerized wool to his two colleagues.

“Are you ready for the rest of it now?” Rachel prodded as she snatched her cough drop from Mike’s hand.

“There’s not that much left, anyway: acts four and five are pretty short.”

“Normally that would be the case, but they’ve added a fifteen-minute interpretive dance section on to the end.”

“…I’m not sitting through any more of this.”

“Just kidding,” Rachel grinned as she crumpled the plastic wrapper and stuffed it in one of his pockets. “There’s no way they’d mess with a classic like that here.”

“I’d cancel my season tickets if they did,” Louis agreed.

“Besides, the best part of going to the ballet is at the end when you can gossip with rival producers about who’s dating whom and which understudy is trying to murder her way to the spotlight.”

“Jeez. I thought _Black Swan_ was just fiction.”

“Please. Haven’t you heard stories about the Mariinsky?”

“Huh?”

“If you really want to make it up Kimberly, you should exchange conspiracy theories about what happened to Svetlana Poroshkova,” Louis advised.

“And we’ll be happy to pass along what we know,” Rachel agreed, “provided you buy us a post-performance snack.”

“Most expensive mistake of my life,” Mike muttered as the lights dimmed again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have some exciting news...or perhaps merely news that will excite some of you. Anyway, I'm currently blocking out the plot of the sequel to Honey Trap (visualize that picture of JK Rowling's scribbling on a sheet of notebook paper, only not as hectic). Since a major element of it is a murder trial, I've spent the past week or so imagining the thought processes of killer.
> 
> Writing: yes, it will make you go crazy eventually.


	15. Valentine's Day

“Hey, are you ready to go?”

“Almost. I need to wait for this file to send,” Harvey replied, shifting his attention from the glacially slow progress bar on his laptop to the blond waiting in his doorway.

“How long is it going to take? I don’t wanna be late.”

“Mike, you keep telling me how wretched this film is supposed to be, and we’re only going to watch it to riff it. Does it really matter if we get there a little late?”

“It’s not just any movie, Harvey – it’s _Fifty Shades of Grey_! All across the country bored housewives are vicariously getting freaky…or whatever trying a blindfold for the first time qualifies as. Besides, this is our mandatory couple activity for Valentine’s Day, which up until this moment we’ve spent in the office-”

“Okay, okay. I’m at ninety-five percent,” Harvey informed, reaching for his coat.

“-because we’re lawyers and the word ‘Saturday’ is not a get-out-of-work free pass for us.”

“So talkative today. Am I going to have to make you wear a ball gag when we get home?”

Mike’s eyes went wide.

“You realize that’s way more hardcore than anything that’s going to be in the movie, right?”

“Yes, but only because you’ve repeated that information about a thousand times this week. Here, make yourself useful and drop this folder on Wendy’s desk.”

“Got it, cap’n,” Mike saluted. “I bet she’s going to like the fancy dinner Marcus is taking her to tonight.”

“They’d both better appreciate it. Donna practically had to rip the maître d’s arm off to get him a reservation,” Harvey groaned, tapping his fingers as the display ticked up to ninety-six.

Truthfully, Mike’s idea sounded like a good way to pass the bizarre corporate non-holiday. Harvey himself had never taken anyone out for dinner for the occasion – he feared that one-night stands might take it as an invitation to get attached.

Well, more attached.

Harvey clicked on the other tab on his computer, pulling up his inbox. A quick glance notified him of another five emails from former flings that needed deleting.

“Folder delivered.”

“And the file has finally sent,” Harvey nodded, shutting his computer closed. “Should we cab it or do you think we can make it in time by subway?”

“You’re still not convinced about that study that says subway bacteria aren’t a threat?”

“Mike, am I or am I not a clean freak?”

“Point taken,” the blond conceded. “But it’s not like the back of a cab is any less gross, so I vote train. By the way, what’s Donna doing today?”

“Same thing she does just about every year: babysit Mariam while Ray takes his wife out.”

“What? I figured she’d be on a date with the Brazilian consular general or something.”

“She did go out with an Ethiopian supermodel one time, but it didn’t end too well. I think the guy ended up proposing to her every day for the successive month.”

“Yikes!”

“Yeah, she tends to have that effect on men.”

“As you do with women?” Mike chided as they stepped into the elevator.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Nice try, Harvey. I saw our doorman ripping up notes addressed to you and redecorating the lobby with all the flowers those chicks sent.”

“Yes…well…at least something good came of it. You sure you’re not upset?”

“We’ve been over this before, stud. I find all of the junk you get hilarious – especially with the effort you put in to get rid of it.”

Harvey didn’t wait to kiss his boyfriend. God, he was a lucky man.

\-----

“Oh, come on! That’s not the knot you use to tie someone’s ankle to the bedpost!”

Mike exchanged smirks with Harvey as the rest of the audience continued to pepper the screen with their protests.

“Don’t they know that silk sheets and a wool skirt don’t mix? The seamstress’ repair bill is going to be gargantuan!”

“Why do they have to make the guy seem like he’s just an adrenaline junkie?” Harvey prodded as he snatched the box of Junior Mints out of Mike’s hands. “Maybe he just knows what he likes.”

“Projecting much?” Mike jabbed as he reached out to take back his candy, only to have Harvey yank them just out of his grasp.

“Am I going to have to screw it out of you?” the brunet whispered.

“Screw what out of me?”

“A confession that I’m hotter than that actor.”

“Are you feeling self-conscious all of a sudden?” Mike joked. “Maybe you should hand back those mints before you get fat.”

“That’s not gonna work, babe.”

“Then at least give me the popcorn?”

Harvey started to mouth a response – probably a refusal – when an atrociously bad sex moan roared out from the speakers and hung in the air like a bout of flatulence. It was all the older man could do not to spill food over them both.

“Jesus! Didn’t anybody in audio try to fix that in post-production?!” a woman in a black sweatshirt cried from across the theater.

“I…can’t even…find the…words,” Harvey grunted through shrieks of laughter, exposing the wrinkles around his eyes.

“Was this a fantastic idea or what?” Mike pressed as he managed to snatch back his chocolate-covered mints.

“You really are a genius sometimes, Mike,” the older man admitted, patting the back of Mike’s hand. “But I don’t know if this beats crappy lesbian porn.”

“Seriously? This totally kills _Charlotte’s Webcam_.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“Whatever, dude,” Mike huffed as Harvey swiped the mints from him again. He turned his attention back to the screen, where he couldn’t help noticing Jamie Dornan fumbling to get the setting of the vibrator right.

“Total amateur,” Harvey concurred, snaking his arm around Mike’s back.

“Are you going for the reach-around after stealing my snacks?”

“Yup. You mind?”

“…Nope, but I want my popcorn back.”

“Ugh, fine,” Harvey relented, rolling his eyes. “So how long do we have before they both realize that S&M is wrong and go back to living pure, holy lives?”

“Like we have?”

“There’s nothing innocent about you, babe,” Harvey hissed into Mike’s ear. “Except that time you begged for Donna to teach you how to send a notification to a judge’s office.”

“…Shut up.”

“Did she have to tell you whose address went where on the envelope?” the older man smirked.

“I was a bike messenger for five years, jerk. Why do you have to oscillate between sexy and snarky so much?”

“Because we still have-”

_“No, Christian, I can’t do this anymore!”_

The audience erupted into boos and jeers as the star sprung up from the bed and fled for the bathroom. A shower of popcorn began in the front of the theater and grew as others joined in. Mike covered his head only to notice his boyfriend was enthusiastically taking part in the protest.

“I paid for the snacks! Why do you have to waste all of the popcorn?”

“Here, try throwing some,” Harvey offered as ushers appeared at the exits and tried to calm the crowd. “I haven’t done this since I was a kid seeing flicks with Markers.”

“You asked for it,” Mike warned as he popped a kernel at Harvey’s forehead.

“Oh, it’s on, Mike,” Harvey grinned as he sprung a handful of food straight at Mike’s face.

\-----

_“Alright, Mike, spill it. Where did Harvey take you for dinner last night – I promise I won’t get jealous.”_

Mike paused for a moment and wondered how long Rachel had been waiting to make this call. He’d liked the photos of her eight-course dinner on Instagram while he waited for Grammy, Rebecca and Mildred to wash their hands after brunch, and he’d only just dropped them off back at the care facility.

“We didn’t really go any place special. I mean, we had burgers delivered a little before midnight, but-”

_“I thought he would have taken you to Jean-Georges, at least…were the burgers artisanal organic?”_

“Umm, no, definitely not. But they were pretty tasty-”

_“I just don’t get the two of you. Back before you started working at the firm, the rumor was Harvey had a table for two on standby at every three-star restaurant in the city.”_

“I don’t think either of us were really interested in the prospect of being wedged in between a room full of other couples complaining about the wait time.”

_“You’ve just got no eye for romance, Mike.”_

Mike restrained a chuckle as he flicked over to a picture of Harvey and himself covered in bits of popcorn that he’d had another moviegoer snap after they exited the theater.

_“Anyway, I’m trying to recreate the entrée I had last night, but I’ll need a couple of tasters to help judge the different recipes.”_

“Don’t bury the lede, Rach: I get a free lunch tomorrow?”

_“I’ll need a hand with a couple of boxes of documents, so you and Donna will-”_

“Done.”

_“And maybe I’ll get a chance to teach you about how Valentine’s Day is supposed to go. Y’know, so you and Harvey can try again next year.”_

“You’re the expert on this stuff, Rachel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's wishing you all the kind of Valentine's Day you want - alone or together, fancy or simple, reveling or vengeful. And if you're upset by me trashing a certain novel for being tacky, know that I am indeed aware that I live in a glass house.


	16. Sore Winners & Smug Losers

Mike clutched the poncho tighter around his huddled body as he watched the finish line. He’d looked for his boyfriend when he crossed it, but even now, after twenty minutes, there was still no sign of him.

Which was a problem because it was frigging _cold_.

“Hot apple cider?”

The blond looked up at the volunteer and reached out just long enough to take the warm drink before shrinking into himself again.

“Waiting for somebody?”

“Yeah. My boyfriend and his brother aren’t here yet, even though competing in this race was the former’s idea.”

“Well, at least you can rub it in his face when he gets here,” the woman grinned. “Do you do a lot of running?”

“No, I’m really just a cyclist.”

“The mortal enemy of all runners,” she shook her head. “Got any blisters?”

“I’m too scared to look at my feet,” Mike confessed.

“Here’s some advice some a real runner: don’t bother with any of the ointments or pads. If you can’t walk with it then you’ll have to drain it, but if it doesn’t have to go then just leave it alone. Oh, and enjoy your medal.”

“Thanks,” Mike nodded as the woman trod over to the next miserable finisher with her tray of drinks. He returned his gaze to the final approach of the race, ignoring a group of college-aged women. Beyond them he could just make out a pair of men.

 _Finally_.

“And what do we have here?” the race announcer asked over the loudspeakers. “Runner 309, Harvey Specter, and runner 387, Marcus Specter, are making their final approach. Hey, aren’t you guys a little old to be running in tandem?”

“Great job guys!” Mike shouted, momentarily forgetting his poncho as he stood to cheer. “You’re all done!”

Marcus heaved a gargantuan sigh and nearly collapsed on top of Mike while Harvey retrieved their medals from the guy just beyond the finish line.

“Oh my god,” the blond Specter cried, “I’m going to die.”

“Could you not crush me while you do that?” Mike eked out as he tried his best to prop up the larger man.

“Stop being so overdramatic, Markers. How did you ever play soccer with the kids in Africa when you’ve got such pitiful endurance?”

“First of all: football. Second of all, I only just joined the league here in New York. Third of all, you dropped this race on me just after a conference I was organizing at work.”

“You didn’t say no.”

“Because I knew you’d hold it over me for the rest of eternity if I’d turned you two down. Besides, then you wouldn’t have had any excuses for why you lost to Mike.”

Harvey narrowed his eyes and stared at his little brother. “I’m going to get us some snacks for the trip home.”

“You’ve got nothing because you know I’m right,” Marcus smirked.

“I would have beat Mike if you hadn’t tripped and fallen.”

“You didn’t have to run with me.”

“How was I supposed to leave you there covered in leaves and dirt? You probably would've tried to drop out if I hadn’t helped you along,” Harvey guessed before disappearing into one of the tents.

“He was panting worse than I was,” Marcus informed Mike as he wrapped a poncho around his dirt-stained shirt. “But we’d better drop it or he’ll make us do another one of these.”

“You don’t want to run another race?”

“Not an eighteen miler – and not in February. I’d be fine with another trail race in the spring or summer, though.”

“Here, I got us water, bananas, and some leftover trail mix,” Harvey announced as he reappeared. “Mike, did you already-”

“Yup, I moved our bags to the car, and I’ve got the keys right here.”

“Good. You can drive.”

“What?! Hey, I wanna relax and stretch out-”

“The winner has to drive.”

“That’s not how it works!”

“Well, I’m not driving,” Marcus informed as he unpeeled a banana. “And we both know how stubborn Har Har can get, so unless you want to stay here overnight you’d better do as he says.”

Harvey raised an eyebrow at Mike until he groaned his acquiescence.

“Jerk.”

\-----

Harvey filled three large glasses with Gatorade and retrieved a trio of coasters as he waited for the two other men to finish washing up.

“Ow, ow, ow,” Mike winced as he shuffled from the master bedroom to the couch. “I think I had a blister inside of another blister. It was like blisterception.”

“Gross.”

“How did you manage to get out of that unscathed?” the blond demanded as he took his drink. “It’s not fair that I’m the only one with war wounds.”

“Y’know, chicks dig guys with injuries,” Marcus crowed as he walked out of the guest room and settled back into one of the armchairs.

“Are you stepping out on Wendy?”

“Never.”

“Okay, so I’m sore, cold, hungry, and tired. More or less in that order,” Mike redirected the conversation. “What do we have for making dinner?”

“Uhh, there’s that Thai we brought back from the office Tuesday night,” Harvey answered, inspecting the contents of the fridge. “And a little of that salad I made on Thursday.”

“Now is not the time for salad,” Marcus griped. “C’mon, are you really telling me you guys didn’t stock up for my visit?”

“You can always take the train back to Brooklyn tonight if you’d prefer,” Harvey countered. “Jessica had us stay late last night, so we couldn’t grab groceries like we usually do. We’ve got a couple of boxes of Easy Mac in the pantry, though.”

“That’s not gonna cut it. Chinese?” Mike asked hopefully, reaching for his phone. “I’m feeling that place that cooks the meat until it’s super tender right now – my mouth is too tired to chew.”

“Fine, but make sure to get extra broccoli with my Mongolian beef.”

“How many times have I ordered us food?” Mike defended, rolling his eyes. “What do you want, Marcus?”

“My youth back,” the younger Specter moaned, his knees popping as he stretched out his legs on the ottoman. “But I suppose a couple orders of pork dumplings and an orange chicken will have to suffice.”

Mike dutifully recited their order to the receptionist while Harvey retrieved a pair of blankets from the linen closet. Thinking it over, he also grabbed the extra comforter for the guest bed.

“Oh, and can we get some extra ginger?” his boyfriend requested as Harvey dropped the comforter on him. “Yeah, thanks a ton, Mei!”

“You know the staff by name?” Marcus asked incredulously as he caught the blanket Harvey lobbed at his head.

“She was worried about how much food Mike ordered from the office, and asked him to drop by the restaurant – probably to make sure he wasn’t obese,” Harvey explained.

“She thinks I’m a human wonder.”

“I’m not sure that remark was meant to be wholly positive.”

“Yeah, but she tossed in a couple more egg rolls gratis, so who cares?” Mike guarded as he tossed the comforter over his sweatpants. “Well?”

“Well, what?” Harvey asked as he unfolded his blanket.

“Are you going to get the Wii out while you’re up?”

“Why do I have to do that?” the brunet pried.

“I drove us back from the race-”

“-and I’m a guest,” his brother finished Mike’s sentence, rubbing his arms through one of the old henleys Harvey had given him. “That leaves you, bro.”

“…Make me do all the work,” the older Specter muttered under his breath as he retrieved the controllers and plugged in the HDMI cables. “I call R.O.B.”

“Yeah, yeah, just hurry up so we can finish a few matches before the food gets here,” Marcus ordered. “And grab us some beers, would you? I don't think I'll want any sports drinks for a couple months.”

“You’ve got arms and legs, Markers.”

“Exhausted arms and legs. And they’ll still kick your butts off the arena; doubly so since Edith isn’t here to save Mike.”

“Dude, I don’t need Grammy to win,” Mike responded as he abandoned his nest to get the beers. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. This is why civilized people get around on bicycles.”

Harvey turned to his brother just in time for them to roll their eyes in unison.

“Or maybe it’s just because you have such a dainty body?” Marcus jeered.

“I’ll dump this beer on your head, upholstery be damned.”

(The threat rang hollow, having been sworn by a man who’d just chosen to fight as a pink Yoshi.)

“There’ll be none of that,” Harvey warned as he set up a computer player as King Dedede and christened it as ‘Louis’, being sure to drop its level down to one.

“Truce?” Marcus asked as he picked Doctor Mario.

“Fine, but I’m not holding back,” Mike answered as he activated another computer as Charizard and cranked it up to the maximum difficulty, renaming it ‘Jessica’.

“Are you calling our boss a dragon lady?” Harvey jabbed as he pulled Mike’s legs across his lap.

“Mewtwo isn’t available yet,” the blond shrugged before pulling the comforter back over them.

“This is going to be an awesome sleepover,” Marcus crooned as the countdown to the match began.

“Please don’t call it that, Markers. It’s childish.”

“Says the guy who silly-stringed the race announcer’s car just because he made a dumb quip.”

“I’m a lawyer: I give people the justice they deserve,” Harvey resolved, firing a laser beam directly into Doctor Mario’s face.


	17. Rough Day

Donna didn’t know how to handle the situation in her boss’ office. Normally she’d just go in guns blazing, but since they weren’t alone that wouldn’t work. Still, she couldn’t do nothing.

For perhaps the first time in her life, she was stumped.

“Donna, I need to ask Harvey for a favor. Would you please announce me?”

The secretary shook herself back to reality and turned up to the junior partner hovering near her desk.

“Louis, right now is a really bad time. I appreciate the fact that you’re not simply barging past me for once, but can it wait?”

“No, it can’t. I’m calling an all-hands-on-deck for the associates because Jessica wants me to clean up the mess with the Delaney case. And thus...”

“You need to get Harold from Harvey’s office?”

“Exactly. But I know he’s touchy about me pulling rank on his associate, and with what happened earlier today-”

“Louis, if you know what’s good for you, you will not in any way mention that.”

The junior partner stepped back and laughed that laugh that had preceded so many of his greatest failures. Those gargantuan teeth, now so far apart, would soon be gnashing against one another.

“Donna, I am the grand master of tact. Just buzz me in, okay?”

The redhead shifted back in her seat, sighed, and complied with Louis’ request. She briefly considered fleeing to the lounge to make herself some tea, but forced herself to stay at her desk.

She might need to perform first-aid.

“Harvey, I’d like to borrow-”

“Go ahead.”

“...What?”

“You want Harold’s help with something, right?” Harvey predicted effortlessly, his eyes still glued to the screen of his laptop... _like he was channeling her_. “Go. Ahead. I don’t need him for anything else today.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Harvey, I don’t want to pry-”

“So don’t.”

Donna frantically signaled for Harold to escape the room; he complied without hesitation, fleeing towards her desk like a puppy escaping the onslaught of a vacuum cleaner.

“It’s just...well, I know you don’t always think of me as a friend, but...I’d like to think you’d do the same thing for me if the situation was reversed...”

“Louis, quit blathering in my doorway and get back to whatever emergency it is that caused you to need my associate in the first place.”

“Seriously, are you okay, Harvey? I’d be glad to take one of your clients so you can have some time-”

“ **SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET THE HELL OUT OF MY OFFICE**!”

Harold bolted for the library, Donna snapped a pencil she’d been clutching, and Louis tripped and fell backwards over the crumpled husk of his soul. For the next fifteen seconds solid the entire floor was silent, save for a few stifled whimpers spilling out from the reception area.

“Donna, I’m going to get a hot dog,” Harvey informed her over the intercom. He didn’t acknowledge her, or the wreck on the floor, as he breezed past on his way to the elevators.

“Oh, God!” Louis bleated, sprinting for the partners’ restroom.

The phone started ringing.

“I still can’t reach the boy genius. Donna, please tell me you have a plan to get him back to normal.”

“Sorry. I’m fresh out of ideas.”

“Ugh. This is all so damned stupid,” she groaned over a tapping noise. “I mean I understood when his dad died, but this? He’s supposed to be a grown-ass man by now.”

“You knew he was like this about _that_ since the day you yanked him out of the mail room.”

“Are you trying to blame this on...let’s not get into a fight, too,” the managing partner resolved. “Just go and help Norma piece Louis back together, would you? I’d have Wendy tell his brother to try calling him, but he might just get more upset at me using Marcus.”

“That sounds like something he’d do.”

“Let’s just pray Mike gets back soon.”

\-----

“Mike, why are you so worried? Did something happen?”

“Rachel, it’s...complicated,” Mike muttered, doing his best to dodge an embarrassing explanation as they walked back to the office. He’d seen the story on his phone just before the battery died, but then they’d been stuck in a meeting with a dozen tenants trying to sue their landlord. “I have a bad feeling in my gut.”

“I told you not to drink that orange juice. The expiration date was a month ago.”

“And I told you that’s just a suggestion.”

“What would Harvey say?”

“He’d-”

“Am I ever glad to see you!” Steve interjected, jogging over to unlock the only non-electronic gate. “They said to send you right up the moment you got back.”

“What?” Rachel asked in monotone. “Wait, so Mike was right?”

“How bad is it?”

“There’s no time for shooting the breeze. Get your butts up there!”

Mike exchanged a glance with the paralegal before hurrying to comply with the security guard’s direction.

“Steve’s never been that rude to me before. Another guy I could understand, but he’s always got a friendly ‘Hello, Rachel’ waiting for me when I get here,” she noted, more than a little distressed. “Do you think Louis really meant what he said in that email?”

“I don’t think it’s that, Rach.”

“This time I think you’re the one who’s wrong, Mike. We might not get to go home tonight.”

Mike briefly considered the possibility of having to spend another all-nighter in the library with the likes of Kyle and Devon and shuddered. No amount of free Seamless was going to make that okay.

“Hey, dipshit-”

Speak of the devil.

“Next time you break up with Harvey, mind giving the rest of us a heads up?” Kyle jeered, retrieving two brown paper sacks from the front desk.

“You broke up with Har-”

“No, I didn’t,” Mike cut Rachel off irritably. “Kyle, I hope you got some Mountain Dew to wash down that bag of dicks you ordered.”

“Screw you, Ross.”

“Okay, so what did happen?”

“I’ll take care of it. Just save me a good spot in the library,” Mike suggested as he surveyed the damage on the faces of the receptionists. “And put in for some lunch for me - here’s my card.”

“Can I-”

“Lunch. Just lunch,” he repeated strenuously.

“Jesus. Took you long enough,” Donna hissed as he rounded the corner. “You know what happened today, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Jessica tried to reach you.”

“My phone ran out of juice.”

Harvey’s assistant slapped Mike on the back of the head before pointing in the direction of the problem. Inside the glass office, Harvey sat at his desk looking like he might frown some other lawyer out of existence.

“With a great boyfriend comes great responsibilities. It’s your job to fix him.”

Although he was still rubbing the spot where he’d been smacked, Mike shot Donna a sideways grin; he might not have known everything about Harvey, but this was something they shared entirely.

“No worries.”

“I hope you won’t look quite that happy when you talk to him, or else I’ll be peeling you off the pavement,” she warned.

Mike rolled his eyes and strolled up right to the doorway, passing through without bothering to knock.

“I don’t want to be dis...Mike?”

The blond said nothing, but after looking around to make sure that no one but Donna was watching, he gave the other man a subtle Vulcan salute.

Harvey melted like butter.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” the senior partner admitted, rising up from his seat to close the distance between them. “When I think of all the hours I spent watching him as a kid...and I only got to see him in person once.”

“I know,” he assured, pulling the big guy into a tight hug. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier.”

“Louis tried to use it for billables...I might have lost it a little-”

“I don’t think you’ll be the only Trekker to get upset today, Harvey. He was a hero to tons of people.”

“You’re not going to call me a Trekkie like you usually do?”

“Now’s not the time for dumb jokes,” Mike observed. (He himself was a bit shocked at how mature he was capable of being, even at a time like this.) “I know you’re going to be alright, but is there anything I can do for you?”

“Hurry up and find the loophole Louis needs to settle that stupid case,” Harvey answered, a bit less wobbly now. “I don’t want to binge watch episodes of the original series by myself tonight.”

“Okay, cap’n.”

The senior partner stared down at the floor for a moment before making a final request.

“I don’t suppose you could say-”

“ _I have been, and always shall be, your friend_ ,” Mike recited. “That goes for me, too.”

“Thank you, Mike,” Harvey smiled, wiping away a tear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP Leonard Nimoy


	18. The Geekiness Awakens

“Mike, now’s not the best time,” Donna warned, burying the mouthpiece of her phone in her dress.

“Does he have a meeting or-”

“Yes. On the Upper West Side. In seventeen…no, sixteen minutes.”

“It’s really important, though,” the blond fretted, turning his head and catching sight of his intended audience, who in turn was observing his associate frantically cramming a stack of papers into a briefcase. “He’ll be miffed if I don’t tell him.”

“Is this a work matter or a personal matter?” the redhead pried, jostling his sleeve and get his attention.

“It’s…umm, well I guess it’s not really a _personal_ thing, but…”

“Is it a ‘lifestyle’ thing?”

“Well, yeah, I guess you could-”

“And by ‘lifestyle’ thing, we both understand I mean a concern of utmost dorkiness, yes?”

“That’s a little harsh-”

“Am I wrong?”

“…No.”

“Good. Well, as long as you don’t make him late, it’s fine. The client’s personal assistant and I are friends, and I’m not going to let you two geeks threaten that,” Donna concluded, retrieving the phone from her side. “Sorry about that, Farrah. I checked, and he’s free on the twelfth…”

Mike hated how good she was at ensuring she always got the final word. In just the past month she had guilt-tripped him into buying her three iced coffees and lunch for her and Rachel at one of the snooty restaurants by the Park, without even the chance of a retort.

“Mike, is there some reason you’re loitering over my assistant’s desk?” Harvey mocked as he emerged from his office, Harold following in tow. He’d clearly meant for his question to sound nonchalant, but Mike picked up a wisp of restlessness in his voice.

“Sorry for repeating what you just said to me, but we’re not going to make it on time if we stop,” the curly-haired associate reminded.

“Finally, someone else around here who cares about punctuality,” Donna chimed in, smirking at her boss.

“Harold, go on ahead and flag down Ray,” the senior partner commanded. “Donna, shouldn’t you be in the file room getting that file I asked for this morning?”

“It would’ve just been in the way while you were prepping,” she explained as typed a reminder into Harvey’s calendar. “It’ll be on your desk by the time you get back.”

“It had better be.”

“Excuse me!? Are you doubting the greatest executive assistant in the city, bar none?!”

“I’m not going to dignify that absurdity with a response,” Harvey groaned, rolling his eyes. “Mike: walk and talk.”

“Oh, we’re going to have a chat when you get back,” Donna threatened before they had rounded the corner.

“What’s so urgent that you needed to drop by?” Harvey pressed.

“Well, it’s umm…I mean, we can talk about it later…since you’re in a hurry, and…”

“Just spit it out,” the older man ordered from the side of his mouth as he waved to a pair of junior partners in the lounge.

“The new Star Wars teaser dropped this morning.”

“And? Was it that good that you had to swing by my office?”

“Uhhh, that’s the thing…”

Harvey fixed a bemused stare on the blond. He didn’t even turn away to press the button for the next elevator – he managed to hit it on his first attempt, the cocky bastard.

“Well, I haven’t seen it yet. I mean, I was hoping we could watch it together,” Mike whispered, his cheeks unexpectedly warming.

Harvey grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him just far enough into the lift so that neither the receptionists nor the security camera would be able to see them.

Then he kissed Mike. Hard.

“God, I love you, babe,” the older man groaned. “My afternoon’s a bit hectic, but I should be free after seven. Give me a text to let me know where you are, okay?”

“U-understood.”

“Good, now get out of the way.”

“Huh?”

“The elevator doors, Mike,” Harvey chuckled. “I have a meeting, remember?”

“Oh, right,” the younger man nodded, leaning back enough so that the shiny metal could divide them.

The associate checked his watch. He was supposed to drop by Rachel’s office in two minutes to grab her for lunch, but he’d need at least twice that much time to will down the erection stirring in his pants.

“Fuck.”

\-----

“I still think Old Han is better than Young Han,” Harvey argued as he snatched the bag of Fritos out of Mike’s hands.

“Dude, nobody tops Young Han in terms of badassery. I mean, Indy _maybe_ , but he’s not even in this universe.”

“How do you know that?” the older man pressed, leaning back against the shelves of the file room.

“You can’t seriously be-”

“Han got frozen in Carbonite, right? Who’s to say they didn’t do that to Indy in a separate timeline, and then they discover him in somebody’s basement in Coruscant,” Harvey theorized before filling his mouth with the snacks Mike had purchased.

“Wait, does that mean that Shia never screwed up the franchise?”

The senior partner shrugged, the crunching noises from his mouth staving off the silence.

“But…would they both look like Harrison Ford?”

Harvey tilted his head in thought, and Mike took the opportunity to grab for the bag. He missed by an inch and had to endure the older man’s condescending smirk.

Too easy.

“Better luck next time, Mike.”

“Argh, this is all just a distraction. You dodged my earlier point completely.”

“Which one was that?” Harvey inquired, shaking more chips into his hand.

“Young Han is more badass. He _shot first_ , dude.”

“Don’t call me dude,” the senior partner scolded. “And I’m a little disturbed by your ageism, Mike. Are you saying that older men can’t be badasses?”

“It’s not…” Mike struggled to form the words as Harvey leered at him luridly. “Old Han just wouldn’t be able to keep up if they got in a tough spot.”

“You think so, huh?”

“Who beat who in that race you had us run?”

Harvey narrowed his gaze, leaning in closer as he did.

“Just a warning, stud – that door isn’t locked.”

“Answer this, Mike: if it weren’t Young Han against Old Han but Henry Jones Senior, who would be more badass?”

“That’s not fair!”

“Explain.”

“That’s _Sean Connery_! It’s completely different – of course _he_ wins.”

“And he’s older, so therefore I win this argument,” Harvey declared. “And that means I get the rest of the Fritos.”

“Hey, we never agreed on those terms,” Mike sulked from his seat.

“The onus for that was on you. _Potamus v. Sebben_.”

“Did you just cite a case from _Harvey Birdman_ as precedent for your illegal seizure of my Fritos?”

Harvey grinned.

“You’re buying dinner tonight. And I get to choose where,” the blond huffed.

“That’s debata-” Harvey began before the room suddenly went dark.

Both men turned as a red lightsaber hummed to life by the doorway.

“Oh, shi-” Mike cried.

“Silence! Where is the brief for the Davidson case?” a familiar and yet artificially deepened voice demanded from the doorway.

“Jessica?!” Mike flinched.

“My name is Darth Callidus, padawan. Where is the brief?”

“I-I have it right here. I was just about to-”

“Fat lot of good it does me when it’s not in my hands, Mike,” Jessica sniped as the lights struggled to re-illumine the dusty cave.

“How long have you been listening to our conversation?” Harvey asked, irritated.

“I got here in the midst of your quest to estimate the cost of a star destroyer relative to the productive output of a rump imperial state,” the managing partner informed them, holding out her free hand for the document.

“That was at least eight minutes ago,” Mike calculated audibly.

“Exactly. My God, the lengths you two can prattle on about this stuff.”

“Where the hell did you get that lightsaber?!”

“Your assistant gave it to me this morning. She said that the new Star Wars teaser was going to be uploaded today and then predicted, ‘You’ll know when to use it.’”

“But how did you know we’d be in here?”

“I made an informed guess. You two really need to decide on a better rendezvous location – I mean, the _file room_? So passé.”

“Okay, so you have the brief. Is there anything else you need me to do?”

“No, so quit eating up the firm’s bandwidth with YouTube and go home. That goes for the both of you,” Jessica warned, pointing the lightsaber in Harvey’s direction.

“How do you know I don’t have more work to do?”

“Because I saw that note informing me you signed a new client to the firm, and you never like to stick around afterward long enough for Louis to try and invite you out for a celebratory drink.”

“Is he-”

“Standing outside your office. But I’d hurry if I were you.”

“We’re going. C’mon, Mike – you can tell Harold he’s free to leave while you drop your laptop off at your desk,” Harvey suggested before turning back to Jessica. “He was instrumental in getting the new client to land, for your information. Harold, that is.”

Jessica rolled her eyes but moved to let them pass.

“My apprentice is still better than yours,” she mocked once Mike was out of earshot.

“Yeah, but I’m winning him over from the dark side, Sith Lady,” he grinned, making a mental note to challenge her to a duel closer to the release date of the movie. “PS: the ones with the crossguards are cooler.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I told someone close to me about all the writing I've done, and...it didn't go so well. I felt like shit for a while, and didn't have the heart to look at any of it for quite some time. Then the show came back, but I didn't feel like watching it.
> 
> Anyway, fast forward to the point where I figured I shouldn't have to give a fuck if someone doesn't like what I do in my free time. I'll get back to the main project soon, but hopefully this should go some way towards making up for my absence.


	19. The Force Also Awakens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler free (for the actual film)!

“Eeeeeeaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuggggggghhh,” Harvey groaned as he woke to the rays of light spilling through the cracks in the blinds. He fumbled about blindly but eventually managed to get the comforter up over his eyes. Triumphant, he grinned into the pillow – before the chill in his legs and chest alerted him to a problem.

The human octopus wasn’t there.

“Mike?”

No answer.

Harvey would’ve yelled the question, but given the circumstances…well, he had already gotten in trouble for raising his voice once. And it wasn’t like he didn’t genuinely feel bad for that bout of excited yipping, surprise Nets tickets be damned.

Groaning again, he decided to take a tactical peek out from the covers. Just a second to check whether the bathroom light was on so he could get back to his dream of signing the Steinbrenners. No big deal.

“Gah!” he hissed as the sunlight struck his eyes again, wondering how much windowpanes with transition filters would cost. He was equally annoyed with the dark, empty room beyond his feet.

He’d have to get up.

“It’s a Saturday,” Harvey whined as he dropped his head back to the pillow, forcing himself to adjust to the bright, cool room outside the sheets.

His thoughts drifted to the previous evening: _Star Wars!_

Mike had purchased tickets to the midnight showing for the whole group months in advance, and he’d lost it with every tidbit of news about it. Despite being equally pumped, Harvey had managed to keep his own productivity at work pretty close to normal – Jessica only had to “chat” with him about staying focused a couple times.

And Louis was worse about it, anyway.

They’d all grabbed dinner together (somehow he’d been stuck with the bill…moochers) and marched in ready to be impressed. After the not-entirely-but-mostly terrible prequels – Harvey had sworn Mike to secrecy about liking much of _Revenge of the Sith_ – it wouldn’t take all that much.

And by and large it was a success. Rachel and Donna gushed endlessly about their “girl crush” for Carrie Fisher, ignoring Harvey’s query as to why women couldn’t simply admire one another without neologisms. Neal asked Benjamin about retooling some of the special effects for use distracting police during an art heist, much to Peter’s dismay. Harold was already thinking about seeing it again with his girlfriend.

Harold was dating…best to set that idea aside for another time.

But Mike had been quiet as they filed out of the theater, ducking into the restroom and then hurrying off to get them cabs. He hadn’t said much during the ride, either, a quirk he usually reserved for those rare instances when the two of them saw a “serious” film. When they’d gotten back home he headed straight to bed.

Harvey stretched and swiveled to his feet, padding over to the chest of drawers for a t-shirt and pair of pants. The sun wasn’t getting any dimmer and he desperately needed caffeine.

The older man stopped at the door to the living room and snuck a glance, sighing with relief when he caught sight of the genius idiot. He smirked as planned his method of attack.

\-----

Mike had just set down his pencil when he felt a pair of arms seize him.

“Aaah!” he cried just in time for the other man to kiss him.

“Gotcha!” Harvey grinned as he pulled away.

“I don’t suppose you considered saying ‘good morning’ like a normal person?” Mike griped, rolling his eyes.

“Neither one of us is normal,” the older man corrected as he snatched Mike’s mug. “Besides, if you had been in bed on a Saturday morning like a normal person, I might’ve.”

“…”

“Hah! Even uncaffeinated, I still win,” Harvey smirked, taking a long sip. “Eww, I forgot how much creamer you put in yours.”

“I’ll take that back if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, I don’t mind – provided you tell me what you’re doing out here.”

Mike turned to his laptop, legal pad and the other papers strewn across the dining table. He shrugged sheepishly at the older man.

“Well, it’s about the movie-”

“I figured as much. You didn’t like it?”

“Uhmmm, it’s hard to explain. I mean, I liked it for what it was, but…well, maybe it’s because I’m an adult now…”

“Go on,” Harvey encouraged, sliding into the chair beside his.

“I guess what I’m saying is, it was great. But it was like going back in time to my childhood…but I don’t want to go back in time and just revisit old stuff. I want to see new stuff – stuff I’ve never even thought about.”

“The franchise _is_ set in the past,” Harvey joked, skimming over some of the notes Mike had made.

“Yeah, but…you know what I mean. Anyway, I thought about what Harvey Specter would do if confronted by a problem like this.”

“And?”

“Well, I’ve read the Star Trek fanfics you tried to hide away on your computer.”

“That was a long time ago-”

“The last update to one of them was two weeks ago,” Mike countered, enjoying the ruddy splotch spreading across the other man’s face.

“I didn’t say it was a long, _long_ time ago,” he mumbled, reaching for the legal pad. “What’s this?”

“An idea for the finale.”

“Are these quadrilaterals supposed to be-”

“I never said I was a good artist,” Mike groaned, feeling the telltale warmth of embarrassment in his own cheeks. “But yes, they’re star destroyers.”

“This many? All in one place?”

“Some of those are under the control of the Republic. Besides, that’s only part of it – the other half involves Chewbacca getting kidnapped to divert the heroes’ attention.”

Without warning, Harvey delivered a series of pokes to his lower abdomen.

“Chewie wouldn’t get captured, Mike. That’s utterly absurd.”

“He does by the new secondary villain of my film seven.”

“Who is…?”

“A Wookiee Sith juggernaut,” the younger man declared proudly as he caught the pitter-patter of small feet from elsewhere in the condo.

“That’s-”

“A female Wookiee Sith juggernaut – with a red whip lightsaber and neutronium knuckles.”

“Does she have a cool ship?” Harvey pried, already joining Mike in fanboy mode as he searched amongst the pieces of paper.

“She will, but I haven’t decided on the final design just yet. These are a few of the concepts I’ve come up with so far,” the younger man explained as he handed over a loose sheet of paper. “I like this one the best right now. It’s a snake, but the cockpit is a gyroscope can freely move up and down to avoid laser fire. When she’s in the center the ends become grappling arms; it straightens out when it makes the jump to hyperspace.”

“I’m guessing she prefers melee combat. Can she spin the arms around like the blades of grinder?”

“…I knew there was a reason I loved you,” Mike grinned as he jotted the idea down.

“Color?”

“Black, with gold inner folds that show when it stretches.”

“So she kidnaps Chewie-”

“You’re already sold on the idea, huh stud?” Mike needled happily.

“I’m speaking hypothetically, babe,” Harvey corrected. “Where does she take him for this diversion?”

“A new planet.”

“Okay, but remember that Lucas has already used the environments from every NES game ever. So that’s forest/jungle, desert, ice, lava, and cloud taken,” Harvey recited shamelessly.

Mike smiled again. Harvey was such a dork.

A fellow dork.

“It’s a super-dense planet with extreme gravity. A hundred times stronger than earth – intense enough that only Wookiees, Sith, and Jedi can survive. Oh, and the indigenous population.”

“Which are?”

“Like this flatworm here,” Mike elaborated, pulling up a tab on his laptop, “only about the size of a small car.”

“They’re definitely not Ewoks,” Harvey grimaced. “So Han needs to rescue Chewie, but he can’t survive on the surface…so he has to get Luke to go instead?”

“Bingo.”

“And then what?”

“Luke meets with the locals and communicates with them through force magic or whatever. Yadda, yadda, yadda. They tell him about another human on the planet. A woman a little older than Luke.”

“Is she a-”

“She’s got a green lightsaber and says that she was the apprentice of another Jedi who was too badly injured to contact Obi-Wan or Yoda. She’s on the hunt for a powerful Sith apprentice who can hide his power but who’s rumored to be there.”

Mike watched as Harvey considered the idea.

“Okay, so meanwhile what’s going on back with-”

“Lando shows up and warns Leia about the stealth ex-Imperial fleet heading toward Coruscant.”

“There are ex-Imperial fleets just roaming around? And they have stealth tech?”

“They start out as disorganized pirates, but reassemble over time. Now would you quit interrupting me?”

“Yes, your highness,” Harvey assured him, doing the mock salute that was _his_ gimmick.

Mike narrowed his eyes.

“Leia tries to tell Han to bring back Luke, but Han can’t abandon Chewie, so he cuts off the transmission. She scrambles all the Republic’s fighters, including a new pilot who she can sense has power over the Force. Down on the mega-gravity planet, Luke and the chick get to an oil lake where the Wookiees are.”

“A double Jedi versus evil Wookiee fight?” Harvey beamed, rubbing his hands together.

“…Nope,” Mike grinned.

“Wait, huh?”

“It’s a trap! She’s the Sith apprentice – the one who can hide her power from even a master Jedi. It’s Luke versus the both of them.”

“What happens next?” Harvey pleaded.

“Luke takes a bad hit to his torso from the apprentice as he starts to lose, but he manages to free Chewie who sends an SOS to Han. The former smuggler decides he has to do something drastic, so he sets the Millennium Falcon on a crash course with the lake before ejecting.”

“No. Mike, you can’t.”

“The lake erupts in flames when it blows up-”

Harvey looked at Mike like he had just murdered a puppy.

“-allowing Luke and Chewie to escape in the chaos. Just in time, Lando’s daughter shows up and rescues Han, Chewie and Luke. And despite heavy losses, the Republic manages to force the Imperials back from Coruscant.”

“I dunno, Mike. That seems a little morose for the climax of a first act.”

“As they’re flying back, Luke opens his shirt to look at the wound and sees that there’s some kind of infection spreading out from it,” Mike continued, ignoring the other man. “The leaders of outer galaxies announce their secession from the Republic which is so incompetent that it’s incapable of preventing assaults on its home planet. The final scene has the Sith apprentice informing her master that everything went according to plan.”

“Hmmm…it needs some…retooling. For one thing, you can’t destroy the Millennium Falcon.”

“Dude! That’s a key part of the movie – it shows older Han is willing to let go of his ship for the sake of his friends. And it gives him a reason for Chewie and he to hunt down the female Wookiee. Y’know, revenge.”

“We’ll see about that,” Harvey nodded to himself, his mind obviously made up.

Mike was about to press the point, but the sound of scurrying feet stole the attention of both men.

“I’ll leave that to you,” the older man offered, rising from his chair. “If I’m going to help you brainstorm I’ll need something to eat and coffee that hasn’t been creamer-ed to death. Want me to make up some extra for you?”

“Yeah, mine has gotten pretty cold,” Mike admitted, turning toward the guest bedroom.

“How long have you been up?”

“Oh, I only started a couple hours ago.”

Harvey glared at him.

“Mike that means you got up at 6:30. On a Saturday,” he scolded. “And we got home at 2:45. You only got four hours of sleep.”

“Only because I forced myself to get that much. I wanted to start last night,” Mike detailed. “I mean, c’mon – it’s _Star Wars_! How could I just lie there in bed?”

The older man’s frown morphed into a reluctant smile.

“C’mere, you idiot. God, do you know how lucky I am to be with a hopeless dork like you, Mike?” Harvey cried as he pulled him into a hug.

“Only as lucky as me?”

Harvey grinned and planted another kiss on his lips.

“I love you.”

“I know.”


End file.
